


An Alternate Punishment

by Scoutsintoskirms



Series: Marietta's Nightmares of the Lewd [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Anal, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Awkward Blow Jobs, Brother/Sister Incest, Centaurs, Denial of Feelings, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Embarrassment, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Fantasizing, Fingerfucking, First Time Blow Jobs, Flashing, Forced, Forced Orgasm, Groping, Hiding in Plain Sight, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sex, Kink Shaming, Magical Bond, Masturbation, Mind Control, Mind Rape, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Oral Sex, Partial Nudity, Propositions, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Self-Denial, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Showers, Situational Humiliation, Sixsome, Slut Shaming, Threesome - F/F/M, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Fingering, Verbal Humiliation, Voyeurism, enf, forced hetero, ghost innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 46,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25997638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoutsintoskirms/pseuds/Scoutsintoskirms
Summary: After betraying Dumbledore's Army, Marietta Edgecombe is informed she is now cursed to have her clothes disappear at random intervals, and any attempt to explain her circumstance only makes things worse. Her attempts to get revenge and circumvent her punishment are spirited, but continually result in things getting more lewd, much to her chagrin. Students and staff who catch her in states of undress have frighteningly realistic reactions.tl;dr: unrepentant traitor gets what she deserves
Series: Marietta's Nightmares of the Lewd [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886938
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	1. The Divergence

Marietta Edgecombe's curse and her current predicament were so simple to explain, it was almost a primal fear. She was relatively sure that everyone had nightmares about this sort of thing happening. Unfortunately for her, the nightmares had become real, and there was no getting out of it.

Simply put, her clothes would vanish at entirely random intervals. The curse was on her body, meaning it only applied to what she was currently wearing, but it was unbearable enough as it was. To make matters worse, whenever she tried to tell someone she was cursed and that her nudity was not her fault, suffice to say she would only attract more attention to herself. No matter what excuse she submitted to anyone, including the teachers, her punishment would only worsen, and she had no desire to see how much further it could go. After the first time she tested the curse, she decided to try to manage the symptoms- curing it could wait until they were let out on holiday.

She no longer agonized over her former friend getting her to join the Defense Association, something she knew she had been stupid to go along with, and worse to betray, since she could have just stopped attending. Being honest with herself, what stood out as her real mistake was asking what measures were in place to prevent people from ratting them out; she hardly wanted to be caught with her name on such a list.

The moment came back to her, not for the first time.

"Well, I thought it better to keep it a secret, but since you asked, and it is important, I've placed an enchantment on the parchment with our names," Hermione Granger had explained. "Anyone who talks about the group with anyone whose name is not on the list will be cursed with… well, a fittingly unpleasant appearance."

It seemed obvious to Marietta that she was putting it mildly out of politeness, since it would demonstrate a lack of faith by declaring the exact nature of the curse like a threat, but some of her friends saw it differently.

"That's it?" Harry Potter asked. "I mean, I'm sure it's an incredibly complex bit of magic-"

"It should be worse," a tall boy with red hair asserted. "Harry could be going to Azkaban over this- really, all of us-"

"Well, I suppose it is a bit mild, but what I was thinking at the time was that we would know who did it, and then be able to respond appropriately," Hermione explained. "There's some chance that the secret could be revealed to one person, and not go any further than that, and it also might be an accident-"

"It's an accident that's easy to avoid, especially when you know what could happen," said someone Marietta did not know.

"Frankly, I would prefer to attach a more severe punishment to the curse, and be done with it," opined another. "I wouldn't want anything to do with a traitor."

"Neither would I." Marietta had a thought that the witch speaking could be the sister of the red-haired wizard. "I think that person should be totally exposed, and to where no one would want anything to do with him or her again."

"It has to be at least as bad as prison for it to make sense," one of the wizards from before decided. "If you put a dozen people in Azkaban, you should get something that's like going there, only a dozen times over. That way, each one of us would want to keep the secret as much as everyone else wants us to keep it." Marietta had a thought that the wizard had a future in law, or perhaps public policy. He wore a blue tie, but she did not know everyone from Ravenclaw.

Eventually, it was agreed that the curse had to be totally humiliating, and that from then on, whoever was inflicted with it would not be able to forget it. There would also be no hope of removing it; that was quite possibly the most important thing. According to everyone else, being able to remove it made the whole thing pointless. Marietta only sighed at that, muttering to herself about how they all had anger issues.

When she eventually decided that whatever the effects of the curse, they could be negated, she reported the activities of Dumbledore's Army to the proper authorities, but was quite shocked to find they did not have anything to say to her in response. She remembered following Professor Umbridge quite a way, waiting to hear something that would tell her she was out of the woods herself, but it appeared she was more concerned with assembling the Inquisitorial Squad and putting the matter to rest. Her trials and tribulations would come after that matter was settled, when she returned to her dormitory after being questioned. She managed to identify Potter, but for some reason she had a mental blank in the meeting and was unable to provide any specifics.

"How could you turn on Harry like that?" Cho asked when she returned to the Ravenclaw common area. She followed her up the stairs.

"Oh, come off it, we were going to get caught anyway. I asked them if you and I could be spared since I came forward."

"I don't care about that- you know I have feelings for him, right?" she asked. Marietta chose not to answer. Before long, her friend would get over her silly crush and they could go back to being the best students of their year.

"This is for the best. You don't have to like the Ministry, you just have to follow the rules."

"There shouldn't be rules against learning magic-"

"The spells we were learning were dangerous," she argued, interrupting. "Honestly, you could kill someone with a fire charm. We don't need to learn that kind of thing in Defense- we really don't need the class at all, that's why we have Aurors and Hit Wizards. Don't tell me you believe Voldemort is back."

"We're not discussing this," her friend decided, throwing her hands up. A few of the other girls in the dormitory were looking at them. Marietta had tried to estimate the amount of support Potter had among students who had not joined him, and her guess was that it was pretty dismal. She doubted she would face substantial social repercussion for calling him out.

They went into the showers eventually and she almost gasped as her clothes disappeared.

"That's a neat trick," Cho commented. "Did you charm your clothes to vanish when you came in here?"

"No- I would remember something like that. That younger witch said that whoever goes against the group should be totally exposed, so this must be what Granger decided to use as a punishment."

"You're saying it's the curse, then?"

"Of course-" All at once her hand moved on its own and squeezed her breast. It was a bizarre sensation, but she fought through it.

"What was that?"

"I- I didn't do that consciously, that must be some other effect of the curse." Her other hand went to her other breast. She had never been fondled before, but it felt exactly like someone else was doing it, since she could not control herself.

"I know. I was talking with Hermione about what we should do for the curse."

"You decided this?" Marietta asked, feeling betrayed.

"I didn't know you were going to turn everyone in. I was hoping no one would. We thought about it, though, and we decided that if whoever gets cursed tries to talk about it, the effects only get worse. I know already, so it's going easy on you, but if you try to tell a teacher, you'll lose control over your mouth."

"This is disgusting!"

"I know. I'm trying to be sympathetic, because it really is a horrible thing to do to someone, and I've been friends with you for years, but I can't override Hermione's decision. There's nothing I can do."

"Well, let's talk to her together. In the meantime, I have to find some way of-" Her clothes reappeared. "What? Why did they come back?"

"Oh, that's the thing. It curses your clothes off at random time intervals, but if you were always naked, you could just put on a new set. If we made it so that nothing ever stayed on you, then the school would realize that it was not your fault. We also kind of went in thinking that it should come as a surprise... sorry."

"This goes way beyond sorry- I tried to get you out... I really talked to Professor Umbridge and tried to say that you felt pressured to join." It was not a true statement, she supposed, but there were more important things to be considered, like how she was cursed. "This could totally ruin my life..."

"Well, Harry almost went to Azkaban, so you're getting off easy. Hermione was going to use a much lighter punishment, but I'm glad she asked me for help. I think this punishment is appropriate."

"Why? I mean- I know I went against the D.A. and I knew there was a punishment, but this is going too far. My mother works at the Ministry-" The sympathy argument seemed to be more effective than any other. "I really didn't have a choice, because if I were caught, she could be fired-"

"Okay, okay, we can go see her tomorrow. Meet us in the library after classes are over."

" _After_ classes?"

"You should at least have to stew through that much."

Cho left the bath.

Sighing, Marietta took off her clothes properly and got into the shower, hoping they would still be there when she got back. Her friend seemed to be of two minds about the whole thing, which made sense given her general nature. On the one hand, she was attached to Potter and she had put a lot of work into the curse with Granger, and on the other hand, it was clearly going too far and the two of them had been friends for years.

"I was even friends with her before Cedric," she said to herself. "I'll be there when she gets over her current fling."

If one thing was certain, it was that Potter and his male friends at the very least would be completely in favor of her being cursed, so that was a possible way of splitting them up, though she still had to get Granger to agree to remove the curse, since it sounded like Cho had no authority to do so herself. She had other questions about how the logic of it worked, like whether it applied to all her clothes or just what she currently had on, but it was a bad idea to bombard a friend with questions after a certain hour.

Lying awake in bed, she tried to think about obvious ways of getting around the effects, like a Disillusionment Charm, though those were difficult to learn ad she would be counted as absent in class if no one could see her. Thinking about it, her clothes had reappeared on her body, not where she had been standing, so the curse had to be aware that she was wearing the clothes, so it seemed likely that if she kept something in her bag, she could put it on in a worse case scenario. If she kept her cloak in her schoolbag, she could at least try to get it on before anyone noticed. Sitting in the back of all her classes would definitely help. Marietta constantly sat at the front, because she was proud of her perfect attendance and academic record, and she wanted everyone to know about it, but she could put up with being a little more anonymous for a day.

"This is only temporary," she said to herself. "By this time tomorrow, the curse will be a thing of the past."


	2. Catching a Glimpse

The following morning, she woke up naked, but she was well-covered. The sheets felt weird on her bare skin, which was clean of course, but the mere concept of wearing nothing at all felt unsanitary. Marietta resolved to scourgify her sheets once out of her current predicament.

Ordinarily, she woke up before everyone else in the dorm to get a head start, but she could not very well get out of bed and just stand around naked, even if she could stand someone other than Cho seeing her in such a state. Even that was barely tolerable, and only because of the circumstances. Secondly, if she were to put on her uniform, there was no telling what would happen when her night gown reappeared. It went down much further than the skirt on her uniform, which was much higher than what she and her parents would have liked- her mother had written multiple letters to the Headmaster about lengthening the skirts to below the knee rather than just above, but each time her request was denied.

Aware that under the best of circumstances her night gown would be visible if she put on her uniform, she had no choice but to wait for it to appear so she could take it off. She truly had no idea what kind of time interval was in use, but there had to be some kind of upper bound to it, since Granger apparently did not just want her naked forever, and the approach of having her naked for three years would start running into the same problems.

"I'm heading to breakfast, Marietta," Cho said as she walked past.

"I'll meet you there, most likely. I'm... not feeling well at the moment." Her friend looked at the shape of her body through the sheets and nodded. She pulled them taut in response, wondering if anyone else noticed. She could not have anyone thinking that she slept naked. The other witches were mostly done getting ready, though some of them looked over in her direction.

"Should I take you to the Hospital Wing?"

"That will not be necessary." It was better than saying she could not make it there, because the next thing to suggest was bringing the school's Healer to the dormitory. She supposed there were worse ways of proving she was cursed, since Madam Pomfrey had almost certainly seen hundreds of nude bodies before. Though it was not always necessary to strip the patient, since things like broken bones could be diagnosed without being seen and fixed magically, they still had to study anatomy when they were going through training, which she understood to be rather extensive.

She agonized over it a moment before reaching into her bag and getting a book out, hoping people would pay less attention to her if she were doing something other than just sitting there waiting for them to leave. Unfortunately, she revealed in the process that her arms were bare, which was probably an unexpected sight. Putting her nose in the book and waiting as her face went red, she decided that it would have been the same had she gone for her wand and levitated the book on top of her.

Keeping up the effort of reading until everyone was gone, she was definitely going to have to skip breakfast if she wanted to be on time, but that was tolerable. She found she did not at all like the feeling of the sheets against her nipples, which had become more sensitive with the window open. Still in bed as time ticked away, she felt trapped and helpless, looking around for anything that might get her out of her predicament. The only way, of course, was to have the curse removed, but she had no idea what kind of curse it was in the first place.

Throwing off the sheets as soon as her nightgown reappeared, she took it off and immediately put her uniform on. Fortunately, she had most of her books in order, so going to her first class required no further delay. Keeping her cloak in her school bag, she hoped she could throw it on at a moment's notice, but it was a longshot anyway. All through Charms she could concentrate on nothing other than the possibility of her clothes disappearing, her hand over her bag so she could grab her cloak all the more quickly.

Unable to do more than absently take notes with her remaining hand in her first class, she resolved to do better in her next few, though her stomach was starting to growl. In Defense Against the Dark Arts, she hoped she would at least have a modicum of sympathy from the professor because she turned in the Defense Association, though the teacher did no more than acknowledge her presence as she might have any other student. Marietta concluded that it was because her help was limited to discovering the location of the practices, and she had been of little assistance in terms of getting Potter convicted.

"That's what really should have happened anyway. Of course he was going up against the chance of going to Azkaban- he was breaking the law, and getting everyone else to join in. It was only a matter of time before the situation progressed."

Her next few classes before lunch were a blur, since she found herself enjoying the food more than normal, though of course she did not make a show of it. She would not want anyone asking her why she deemed it necessary to miss breakfast. On her way to Arithmancy, she suffered some rude looks from other former members of the criminal organization, but they did nothing to her.

"Granger must have told them that I was already being punished," she said to no one in particular. "Well, I am, and it's too much already."

The challenge came in Transfiguration. Taking no chances, she took a seat in the back and placed her schoolbag on the desk in front of her, as if to block what she was writing. Professor McGonagall was having them write advanced properties of materials that could not be transfigured, an appropriate topic for the sixth year. That was about when her clothes vanished.

Containing her panic, she fumbled with her schoolbag, getting her cloak out and putting it on right away, hoping that her clothes would appear as soon as possible, and under the cloak rather than on top of it. Marietta actually impressed herself with how quickly she moved all things considered, and looking around the front of the room, it seemed nobody noticed, least of all the instructor. She was still mortified at the thought that she was sitting there with only a cloak on, but it could have been infinitely worse.

Looking to her left, it appeared she had been noticed by none other that Roger Davies, who had a habit of leaning back in his chair. He stared at her slack-jawed, and she instantly went red, hanging her head. She found herself wishing he would fall out of his chair.

"I can't say it's the curse. I can't say it's the curse. I can't say it's the curse," she muttered under her breath, returning to taking notes with a free hand. She could not very well leave the classroom without her clothes; it was inevitable that someone would notice at that point. Steeling herself, she would just have to explain it to him the following day, but she would probably refrain unless he went around telling people. The very thought of that horrified her. There would be no way of proving she had not been naked in class, so all she would have is her excuse of having been cursed.

To make matters worse, if Davies told people, Granger might not remove the curse at all.

"Roger," she whispered. "Roger-"

"What?" he whispered back.

"Stay after class a moment."

"Sure, anything."

She nearly made herself dizzy rolling her eyes. It was not as if she wanted to see him for any reason other than convincing him not to say anything. It was doubtful that he had seen much in the first place, but he was a young wizard, so a mere glimpse of her side would probably send him to a fervor. Judged proportionately, she should probably be commending his restraint, but she could not bring herself to do it. She still wished it had been another witch who would have seen her; at least then she could expect little in the way of a reaction.

When class let out, her clothes mercifully restored themselves and she took off her cloak, putting it back in her bag. The wizard of her same House came over to her desk as she packed her things.

"Hi," he said. "That was a bit of a neat trick."

"How much did you see?"

"Enough to know what was going on. What spell did you use? I must say, it looks useful." Her eye stems threatened to twist themselves in knots.

"Of course it would," she responded, deciding to pass it off as an accident, since he seemed to think she knew a denuding charm and used it on herself. "I don't intend to tell you... unless you can keep it secret long enough for me to perfect it and promise not to use it on me."

"Deal."

Marietta hoped her conditions for the agreement would make the idea of it seem more believable, and it appeared to work. Shrugging her shoulders at the simple-minded, easily manipulated wizard as he left class, she went to her last class of the day, Ancient Runes, where she did not expect to have to worry about her clothes disappearing. Surprisingly, they vanished as soon as she turned a corner, seeing only a red-haired witch at the other end as she jumped into a broom closet.

She had never used the school's facilities as a hiding place before, but she was grateful for them at the present moment, allaying her mortification at being seen naked. Even if the witch's vision were obstructed by her schoolbag, it was unmistakable that she was wearing nothing at all, even from that sort of distance. She hung her head with the greatest possible embarrassment. Not only was she trapped in a closet, where she could be discovered at any point by the school's beloved caretaker, she was probably going to be late for class. To be sure, she could get her cloak out of her bag, but then she would be walking through the castle wearing only a cloak- anyone would be able to see her feet, and deduce why she was holding it closed around her.

"I should have put my muggle clothes in my bag. It would not be the same as my proper uniform, but at least- no, skipping class is preferable. At least I can give an excuse for skipping class. I can say I was feeling under the weather." Telling the teachers about the curse after the fact would probably be a bad idea, since it would only prompt further revenge from former Defense Association members.

She waited and waited, but her clothes did not return. It seemed profoundly unfair that they were gone the moment after she regained them, but that was consistent with the design of the curse. Randomness was supposed to have surprises, after all. She could kick herself for not packing her muggle clothes, but Cho had already promised to try to speak with Granger about lifting the curse, and if she were absent from that meeting, both of them would be able to deduce a possible reason why. She did not pretend she had an absolute monopoly on being smart, after all.

There was a knock on the door.


	3. A Reasonable Arrangement

Marietta contained her freakout to the span of three seconds, and when the knock came again, she was perfectly still. She would not react, no matter what. Already having cast a locking charm on the door, she would cast it again if she heard the unlocking charm, and sooner or later whoever was trying to get in would give it up completely.

"Excuse me, I need to use the broom closet." She might have recognized the voice if she thought about it, but it well and truly did not matter who was on the other side. "There's a painfully cute girl over here, and she doesn't want to be seen by anyone else." Her eyes could not be rolling more painfully. She wanted to tell the wizard on the other side that perhaps if she did not want to be seen, she could just not be getting up to that sort of thing. That seemed to be the ideal solution to the problem, after all.

The matter was made worse by the fact that she actually had a legitimate reason for being in the broom closet, she had something that she had every right to keep secret, but it gave her an idea. He could not see her grabbing her breast, after all.

"I can't come out because I'm cursed," she explained. Instead of grabbing any part of her body, however, her hand went to the doorknob. She tried to pry it off with her other hand, but somehow it was stronger. "Please, don't look at me," she begged, trying to keep the door locked with her wand.

"I might be able to help you in some way," the wizard said. "Can you tell me what led to being cursed?"

"No, no, it's quite all right, I just need to be left alone. The horrible witch who put this on me is going to remove it if I explain how bad it is. She'll realize it's too much for anyone to bear," Marietta explained. "She will most likely be ashamed she would ever do this to another witch."

"Okay, well if you're sure... I could go get her for you."

"Thank you, it's Hermione Granger. I'm sure you've come across her once or twice. She certainly makes herself known to young wizards."

There was no reply, so she assumed he had already walked off. Whether or not he found her, at least he was away, so she allowed herself to relax a bit. Fortunately her hand was returned to her control. Peeking through the crack in the door to check that there was indeed no one on the other side, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was still naked, but at least she was alone.

"I cannot risk telling anyone. I should have known the curse would have some way of making it worse, even when I am behind a door." Despite her hatred for it, she found herself more and more interested in how the logic of it worked, but questions regarding that could wait until after Granger removed it.

Eventually another knock came.

"Granger?" she asked. Her clothes returned immediately as the door opened. "How is that a random time interval?" she asked.

"What are you going in this closet?" the witch asked. It seemed Cho had already found her.

"You know why I was in there- I was naked up until a moment ago."

"Oh, well, that was lucky. I didn't want to see you naked."

"I should hope not. The best thing to do would be to remove the curse from me."

"Are you sure we should, Hermione?" her friend asked. "Has anyone even seen her yet?"

"How dare you! Of course someone has seen me. You know Davies; he's on the Quidditch team with you-"

"The Quidditch team Umbridge disbanded," Cho said, rolling her eyes. "I haven't seen any of my teammates in a while, Marietta. I'll ask him if he saw you naked. He might lie about it, though. What's something I could ask him to make sure?"

"Why would he lie about seeing me naked in Transfiguration? No one would ever believe him?"

"Yes, no one including us," Granger said. "You expect us to believe you were naked in class and no one else noticed?"

"I was in the back of the room."

"Surely Professor McGonagall-"

"I had my schoolbag on the desk in front of me- I also was not wearing my cloak at the time, so it did not disappear with the rest of my clothes. Davies saw me before I managed to get my cloak on. Are you happy now?"

The two witches on the outside of the broom closet exchanged a look.

"We've decided we've been really awful to you, but until we can be sure Davies saw you, the most we can do is lessen the curse," Cho decided. "From now on, one article of your clothing will disappear at random, instead of all of it at once."

"Don't worry; your underthings will not reappear on top of your uniform," Granger added.

Marietta wanted to protest, to say that she was still being treated unfairly, but she had an opportunity. All she had to do was prove that Davies had seen her, and then they would remove the curse entirely. She could get their whole little club thrown out of school as soon as she had the use of her tongue again.

"How can I prove that I was seen naked?" she asked. "What kind of proof would you accept?"

"Well, an Unbreakable Vow would be tricky," her friend said. "Most people would not agree to one, even under the best of circumstances. I guess you could have him tell us what your body looked like."

She thought about it. There was no way it could be as embarrassing as being seen naked in the first place.

"That would require witnesses, though," Granger said. "It's not just the two of us that need to be satisfied with the punishment; it's the whole Defense Association."

"I can't have him describe my body to everyone-"

"Well, you would have to describe it to us, first," Cho said. "That way we would know if he got it right."

"You have already seen me naked."

"Well, I have, but no one else has. Could you tell Hermione what your breasts look like, so no one would suspect that I was just confirming whatever Roger said?"

"I don't know that he saw my-"

"Be as detailed as possible."

"Well..." The two witches were staring at her. She did not like the idea of describing her body, even when it was just other witches. "They're... normal, decent looking breasts, not that I take pride in that sort of thing."

"That's not very specific. How big are they?" Granger asked.

"They're... well, they're certainly not massive-"

"I don't know, they seemed pretty sizeable to me, when I saw them yesterday. I would say they're cute, though," Cho said.

"Sizeable and yet cute? I'm not sure I understand-" Marietta's clothes disappeared again. "Oh, that's what you mean," she commented, having a look before the mortified witch could cover herself. "I didn't know you had freckles all the way down to your chest."

"Well, you wouldn't know if you hadn't cursed me-" she started, suddenly finding that her tongue was hanging out like that of a panting dog. Eventually the vulgar expression subsided. "What even was that? I thought that I was just going to grab myself-"

"No, it's whatever makes it worse at that given moment," Granger explained. "If you were in Professor Snape's office, you would probably start sucking on a potion vial." She looked over at the other witch, who nodded. "It's a very complicated curse."

"Well, can you at least give me the less severe version in the meantime?" she asked.

"Of course. We've been awful to you, after all."

"Simply ghastly. You did nothing to deserve this kind of treatment."

As soon as they waved and left, Marietta swore. She should have known they would be beholden to the rest of the group- it was a joint decision that there would be a substantial punishment, after all. Apparently Granger had something milder planned. Of course, that was her definition of mild, meaning it could have been something extreme, like being made to apologize in front of the entire school- or to make matters worse, the deposed Headmaster Dumbledore.

Perhaps she could stand to be grateful the punishment had lessened, but at this point she had only two things on her mind. Firstly, she needed to get Davies to be able to describe her nude form, and then she wanted revenge. It was their fault in the first place for defying the High Inquisitor, and for that they had yet to pay a suitable price.

It would not be enough to simply visit the same punishment on one of them. No, they had all committed the same crime, and they had all made themselves responsible for punishing her unjustly, so she would punish them all with the same punishment, at the very least. If she trapped them all in the same place and cursed them all at once, the wizards would probably take advantage of the witches, and then they would all be expelled, so much the better for the academic standard of the school. She highly doubted any of them had been paying attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts, meaning they would all be abysmal in the way of theory.

One thing they definitely would not understand is that if a witch wanted to defend herself, she would do best to strike first.

Marietta went to the library and poured over several books on curses. She could not find anything that specifically related to clothes disappearing, which she expected, so she looked for something with a narrower scope. There had to be a curse that could adjust itself based on the situation. Unfortunately, she knew not where to look to find more information on it.

It was worth considering that asking about the curse might be as bad as talking about it, since if she were clever enough she could lead adults into figuring out what had happened to her, but thus far only some of her underthings had disappeared. There were limits to how bad the effects of asking a question could be. As soon as she walked over to the librarian's desk, however, she noticed her pants were gone. Flattening her skirt, she realized she did not know whether that was a random effect or the consequence of approaching a faculty member for help.

To her surprise, her skirt disappeared as well.

She flattened herself against the librarian's desk, keeping her schoolbag to her back, in hopes that no one would notice, else see anything if they did. Her face was red and Madam Pince noticed.

"Excuse me, Miss Edgecombe?"

"Yes, would there happen to be any books on curses? Complex curses that make themselves worse on context?" she clarified. It was almost certain that her skirt disappeared because she was going for help, but she was already there. Looking around, it appeared some people had noticed her pressing against the desk, but no one had said anything. Fortunately her schoolbag was covering most of the bare skin to be seen, though in the best of circumstances people would think she had picked today to wear a particularly short skirt.

"I believe you will need a permission slip to access the Restricted Section, where books on such curses can be found. Not two days ago there was another student your age who told me she was returning a book to that section, and it had been most useful in-"

"Yes, that would be the book. Might you remember the title?" she asked. She looked around again. It would probably seem bizarre for her to be so close to the librarian's desk, and as she expected, Potter was sitting there smirking. "Also, could you tell me any book on how I might get my quim stuffed?"


	4. The Good Girl

Marietta immediately covered her mouth, which almost caused her to drop her schoolbag, which might have embarrassed her enough to commit suicide on the spot. Everyone was watching her now.

"Sorry, I misspoke."

"You misspoke?"

"Yes, I do that sometimes. I meant to ask about books on countercurses, but I appear to have misspoken."

"It appears you have," Madam Pince agreed. "That was about the worst instance of misspeaking I have ever heard, but I suppose it must happen from time to time. See that it does not happen again."

"Absolutely."

She wanted to leave, and she guessed she was expected to leave, but she could not, not without a skirt. As if taunting her, her pants restored themselves, but that simply would not cut it. She never felt quite clothed without her underthings, but between those and actual parts of her uniform, she would take the latter every time. Moving aside, but not out from in front of the desk as another student approached, she tried to think of why the curse was keeping her from research.

"Granger never mentioned anything about asking for help," she muttered to herself. "I would think that if she wanted to explain the rules to me so that I would understand it, she would explain all of them- unless she wanted to catch me off guard again. From now on, I'll have to assume she might be tricking me."

When her skirt finally reappeared after the librarian asked her if she needed anything further a few more times, she went to straight to the Restricted Section, but remembered she needed a pass. Getting one would be easy, since she could always make up something unrelated that she was studying, but even that carried a risk with it. Trying to undermine the curse might have been the very thing that embarrassed her when she went to Madam Pince, rather than the act of asking for help.

"Yes?" the older witch asked, turning back to her after the other witch left.

"I missed the title of that book," she said, thinking of it on the spot. The librarian shifted a record on a card across the desk, as if afraid of saying anything herself. There was another student to be helped, anyway.

"Well, everything I do carries a risk- I'm even out here when my clothes could disappear at any time," she said under her breath. "The only time I can be sure that I won't embarrass myself is when no one else is around." The best part about that was, if she intended to come to the library at night, there was hardly a point in asking for a pass. She knew her revenge would have to have a greater level of security than the one the Defense Association put on her- it was not as if they could help being less clever than she was, but it was a simple matter of breaking the rules when they expected her to behave differently. An Unbreakable Vow would seal the deal in case she ever put them in a situation from which they had no other escape.

Entertaining herself a moment, she imagined Granger divested of clothes in the middle of the courtyard, just before the students came down for breakfast. Marietta would not gloat, of course, that could come later. She would offer a way out in the form of a binding magical contract, which would domino to getting the rest of them, starting with Potter. He was the leader, after all, even if the deposed former Headmaster said otherwise.

She went to bed after doing her assignments, relieved that her clothes did not disappear whilst she was alone in the dormitory, though it would not have been surprising or terribly problematic. Keeping the same academic standard was going to be difficult if there were classes she was going to have to skip, especially if it was a protracted process of un-cursing herself, but she could at least study by herself. Ordinarily she went over material in the library, but with her mortal enemy smirking at her from behind some irrelevant tome, that was not going to be possible.

Fortunate now more than ever that she had a clean record and good academic standing, she was perfectly confident in her ability to dedicate a night to a personal project as soon as the other witches in the dormitory were asleep. As she walked out, she thought about how easy it all was, how she had stored up treasures for herself in the event that a need to misbehave arose. The Ravenclaw common area was secured from the outside, as were all the others, but a clever student who sneaked past the prefects could reasonably expect to get anywhere in the castle she wanted to go. She had to go to the stairs before she could get to the library, but without anyone else using them, they should cooperate with her wishes.

She spotted another student out of bed, but he was hardly of consequence. It seemed he had somewhere to be and paid no attention to her; he was tall enough to be a Prefect and have an excuse to be out of bed. Shrugging and turning away as she took the stairs, her shirt disappeared. Containing her panic, she moved quickly and noticed her brassiere was still missing from earlier, she hoped that would be it, but remembered there was no one around anyway. Walking at a normal pace to keep patrolling teachers from hearing her, she reached the library, finding it unlocked.

"I'm looking for _Curses of Convolution and Complication_ by... Sinister Merlin Bollock?" She looked around. "What a strange name." She flipped through the pages, but found her hands were stuck to the cover immediately after she picked it up. "Must be some sort of sticking charm." Deciding it was a trap for the unwary, she knew she could get it off if she could get her wand to her hands, but with both of them stuck, she was quite helpless. Flipping through the pages by touching them with her tongue, she found it was not a book on curses at all, but a rather disgusting cautionary tale about treason in which some unreasonably lewd punishment was ascribed to a witch described by her tormentors as the queen of prudes.

With her wand normally stored in her coat, she found she had no access to it whilst her cloak was vanished, but she felt uncomfortable waiting around at night with her bare breasts in plain view. She could try to go back to Ravenclaw Tower and hope her cloak came back to her on the way, but she could imagine being discovered with the book in her hands. It was not even an academic resource she was reading half naked, it was smut; there was no other word for it. As she walked over to the gate to get out of the Restricted Section, she found she could not open it without the use of both hands.

"That horrid Granger!" she whispered, containing herself. She could hide until her clothes came back, but what then? Even with her wand, how would she get the book out of her hands? Concentrating deeply, she attempted to cast the cancel charm without a wand. Wandless magic could not be described as her specialty, but since she was casting it on a surface that she was touching, it should be a little easier, or at least that stood to reason. Making several attempts, she found it was not as easy as she would have hoped. There was no way to practice and see if she could get halfway there like with Transfiguration.

"Excuse me?" she turned to the sound of the echoing voice. "It appears you've found yourself in a spot of trouble." It belonged to a ghost. For a dead witch, she was rather beautiful, making the transparency work to her advantage.

"Oh, please don't tell anyone you found me here-"

"I have never told a soul about finding students after hours in this particular section of the library. I can't say I have ever caught one naked, though."

"Is there any way you can take this book off my hands? I can't let go of it."

"Oh, yes, I fear many books in here are cursed. It's one of the reasons you normally need a pass. You're not one to follow the rules, though, aren't you?"

"Well, I know it doesn't look like it... but, generally, I am. In fact, I'm only in this situation because I did follow the rules." She knew better than to explain fully. Embarrassing herself in front of a ghost was a special kind of pathetic. The dead were known to envy the living, but a few of the school's specters had a specific smirk for whenever they came across a student with whom they would not trade places.

"Ah. Perhaps you could let me see the book," the ghost suggested. Airily, she read a few words from the pages before passing her hands through the book. Frowning slightly, she put her hands inside Marietta's, causing her to wince as the book fell to the floor. "I'm afraid that I can no longer use my own magic."

"I understand. I think. Thank you." She turned back as she walked out. "Please don't tell anyone you found me here."

"I shall not tell a soul," the spirit repeated. "In the strictest of terms, I am not supposed to be here either, nor am I meant to momentarily possess students. If you promise not to mention that to anyone, I shall not tell anyone living either."

"I promise."

The dead witch's joke might have been funnier had she figured it out in time, but she was not in the mood for humor at the present. Opening the gate and getting out to the library proper, she caught sight of another ghost, whom she avoided. It occurred to her that she was going to have to carry her wand in her schoolbag and carry her schoolbag with her at all times, else she would be without it when she needed it most. Grabbing a few books she expected to need in the next few days or weeks, she made the trip back to Ravenclaw tower, where she could only hope no one was awake.

The door had a difficult riddle when she approached it, but she got it on the third or fourth try, peeking to see no one in the common room except Cho, which was a relief. She already knew why her breasts were bare, after all.

"There's no need to show them to me, Marietta. I've already seen them."

"I wasn't showing them to you. You know why I'm like this right now. Can you see if anyone is awake in the dormitory?"

"What are you going to do if everyone is?"

"Wait for my clothes to reappear. Why are you out of bed anyway?" she asked, hoping her friend would not ask her the same.

"I just wanted to check something. I guess I should be grateful I get to do things whenever, whilst you have to sneak out at night. We really have been atrocious to you."

"I know you regret it; you just can't override everyone else involved." She sighed, frustrated that Cho's disagreement with her punishment only meant she would put in a good word or something. If they were to be friends, after all, she would have to be understanding.

"I'll go check, but I am pretty sure everyone is asleep. It's like two now." The other witch disappeared up the stairs and she hid whilst she was waiting. As soon as she returned with good news, however, her clothes reappeared.

"Oh, well that's convenient," she muttered, getting her wand out of the cloak. From now on, unless she had it in her hands, it would have to be in her schoolbag, which had not disappeared thus far, which at least made sense, as the curse seemed to be confined to embarrassing her. If she knew one thing for certain, her revenge on Granger would be substantially worse than an embarrassment.


	5. Weaving a Web

Reading the books she had picked up in the library the following day, she was glad that it was the weekend and there were no classes for her to skip. It was harder than one might have thought to learn advanced magic with the self-study approach, but that was all that was available to her at the moment. She resolved to go to her Apparition lessons whenever the Ministry instructor came, but while at Hogwarts the skill would be of limited use. She doubled down on the Disillusionment Charm.

She found Roger Davies, or rather, he found her in the common room, about when her cloak disappeared.

"Whoa, where did your cloak go?"

"I'm still perfecting the spell," she whispered. "Can we talk about this in private?"

"Sure." They walked out to a broom closet in the corridor. A younger witch passed them by as they stepped out, sparing her from having to answer the riddle. She felt all her underthings disappear, which was upsetting, but not the worst of circumstances. Getting in the broom closet, it seemed the Quidditch player had a few questions.

"It's not really a spell you're perfecting, is it?" he asked. "I mean, whatever it is, you can tell me about it."

"Oh, no, it is, I just have to test it on myself."

"That makes sense. I can see why other people wouldn't want you to test it on them. Why would you do it in class, though?"

"Well, people rarely look over in my direction in class. Besides, sometimes I'm so far ahead that I get bored. It's better than consuming free time." From his expression it seemed like he believed her. "Anyway, there was a question I wanted to ask you."

"Yes?" he asked, looking a little uncertain.

"How much did you see that time?"

"Well... it was only for a moment. It was enough to know you were naked. Don't worry too much about that."

"No, I need to know... for the spell," she lied. "Did you, by any chance, see my breasts?"

"Not really. I really didn't have the angle, I confess. I'm sure it would have rightly embarrassed you either way. Mum used to say that witches who let me see them like that just weren't worth my time. Not worth anyone's time, really. I think I'd have enjoyed a look, though, so it's a shame."

"Yes, but, well, there are some people who don't believe my spell works."

"Might just be best to use it on them."

"They wouldn't agree to that. I mean, you wouldn't agree to be hit with an unknown spell, would you?" He shrugged, making her wonder how much more difficult he could possibly make it. "Anyway, I said that you saw me naked one time, and now they're not sure I'm telling the truth."

"I mean, why do you even have to prove it to them?"

"They're... rivals of mine," she lied. It was a wonder Granger's curse allowed her to lie about her circumstances. In the worst case, if she were suddenly naked in front of everyone, she could just blame her for removing her clothes on the spot, not by using some complicated curse. It was not as if she wanted to exploit that particular loophole, but convincing Davies that she had a spell that could do just that would lend credit to her accusation.

"Oh, I see. Have they been working on a spell that does the same thing?" he asked. Marietta knew she was going to get caught if she spun enough of a web.

"I presume so, though they may deny it. I had no intention to reveal it myself until..."

"Right. Well, what do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

"Well, you know Cho, right? She's on the Quidditch team?" He was nodding slowly. "Well, she and I got caught up in the rebel student group before I eventually extricated us from the situation. The trouble is, they're the ones who are my rivals on this little project."

"Weird. I wouldn't have thought you'd want anything to do with them."

"I didn't want to, not really, I just have to prove a point. I'm... someone who has to prove things. I'm someone who wants to win."

"Oh, that explains it. So I need to tell them that I've seen you naked and that's it?"

"Well, they may not believe you if you just said it. They may require... a description. Nothing too extensive, since they would expect you to only have a glimpse..."

"No, I get it. They might have thought we were in on it. Foolish of them, really, I never participate in any student organizations."

"Of course, they're quite foolish, to be sure..." She wondered why her clothes had not disappeared yet. She was without her underthings, again, which was becoming a common occurrence, but if she ever wanted her shirt to disappear, it was at the present, and then never again. "Could you, um, turn around a moment?" she asked. He did so and she started unbuttoning her shirt, figuring he had already guessed what was coming next. She had to be sure he would pass their little test, after all. "Okay, now you can look."

Marietta closed her eyes as she presumed she was being ogled. It felt awful, of course, but there was nothing at all to be done about it. Like searchlights she could feel his hungry eyes go over her bare skin.

"Shall I turn 'round now?" she opened her eyes to see he was still looking the other way.

"Yes, please," she said quietly, trying not to sound annoyed.

"Merlin, those are some nice tits, you know." She swelled with what was most certainly not pride as he stared, and it was even worse than she imagined it. She nearly died just thinking about his gross eyes darting around in their sockets as they beheld what should always be kept hidden, under no circumstances shown to anyone, least of all a _wizard._ She found her feet moving closer and closer together as he stared.

"Do you think you have a good enough idea yet?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know, I mean, if you were ever wondering why we blokes can't seem to get enough of knockers, it's because we can't remember them longer than thirty seconds or so, not unless we get a good look." He moved his whole head closer, sending a jolt up her spine. Marietta had never felt so exposed. She was positive she would never feel this exposed again. The moment the curse was removed... "Should be about enough. Anyway, I'll see you later," he said, walking out of the broom closet before she had a chance to get her shirt buttoned again.

Somehow the experience had been infinitely worse than it would have been had her shirt simply disappeared, since that at least would be totally out of her hands- the very idea of taking it off herself would have been unthinkable a week ago. The only thing that made it even remotely negotiable was the curse.

"That horrid Granger!" she cursed, no one around to hear her. "The moment I discover how she created that curse for me, I shall create an infinitely more complicated curse for her." Going back to the dormitory, where she resumed reading her books, she dedicated herself to the books on dark magic. Ordinarily, she was completely against using such resources, but she was only administering the justice that her targets had escaped by some clever trickery of their former Headmaster.

Steadily improving her understanding on the subject, the goal was to be able to cast the Imperius Curse perfectly, as an imperfect iteration would most likely result in the deed being traced back to her. She still had the books out for the Disillusionment Charm, but when Davies helped her get the curse removed, it would be more or less unnecessary.

Marietta shook her head. It would be necessary, just not in the way she had initially thought. Instead of hiding herself while in class, she could hide her efforts of getting revenge. She was relatively sure that someone under the curse would not remember the sound of her voice if she desired it, though for best results she was going after a solitary victim anyway. Of course, her main enemy always surrounded herself with allies, mostly wizards, so she would need some way of dragging her away from the rest. Cho would not fall for any trick she used and she would prefer not to use the curse on her, since she still liked to think of the two of them as friends, even as horrible as her friend had been to her.

The simplest thing to do would be to use it on a teacher, preferably one who had opposed Headmistress Umbridge, and use him or her to lure Granger out, where she would be cursed as well. Once she had her enemy under her control, she could enact any kind of revenge she wanted. Tossing around various ideas in her head, she decided to be merciful and proportionate and simply strip the witches in front of their 'friends', the wizards of the Defense Association. Once should be plenty, and of course the school would have no way of connecting it back to her. They would know she did it, of course, but enough of them would still be under the Imperius that it would be impossible for them to resist.

"That was a real mistake of the Ministry; they should have authorized the use of Unforgivables on students when they sent her here as the DADA teacher," she muttered to herself, still reading and taking notes on the spells she wanted to research. It was doubtful any of the other witches heard her, but her skirt picked right then to disappear on her, which was unimportant, as she had taken to studying in bed, but still worthy of note. Marietta wondered if the curse could detect that she was trying to take revenge, since it would relieve her of her embarrassment. Fortunately, though, her books had not disappeared.

Keeping track of where she was in her books, she decided against going downstairs to eat, even though she was hungry. Whether she liked it or not, she could undo the pain of not eating, but she could never undo the shame of showing everyone her rear, so that was decided. The moment her shirt vanished, as if to give her more reason, she threw the sheets the rest of the way over herself and kept reading.

"Were you up late again?" Cho asked as she walked in.

"No. You know why I'm under here," she whispered back.

"Oh, that's right. Not coming down, then?"

"Not until after you and Granger ask Davies what he saw. He's a bloke, so you had better act quickly, or else he'll forget."

"He's not that bad," her friend assessed. "I mean, neither are blokes in general. I think Goldstein is close to the top of his year-"

"Well, that was what he said."

"Really? I thought he just saw you from across the room. I didn't have any idea you had a whole conversation with him. I wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere near him after he saw me naked."

"Well, I did and that's all there is to it. I said that some people would probably want to know what I looked like, and as impolite as it would normally be, under the circumstances it would be better to be honest."

"Oh, that makes sense," Cho decided. "What are you reading?"

"Curses had me interested, so I'm doing research on them. It should give me some idea of what's going on with mine."

"Oh, are you going to remove it yourself?" her friend asked. "That sounds like it might be a bit easier than asking all our friends about it."

"Well, it's not that simple. I can't ask the librarian for help without embarrassing myself."

"Marietta, everyone has to ask for help sometimes."

"You know what I meant," she said as Cho simply shrugged and walked off. She could swear that sometimes that witch seemed so dense.


	6. Compounding Humiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer one this time. Can't commit to any kind of regular schedule, but I finished the last one, didn't I?

The following morning was a Sunday, meaning it was their last chance to meet with Granger and some of her friends so they could ask Davies about whether or not she had been suitably punished. Cho would have already told them that she spent most of Saturday in the dormitory and skipped a class the day before that, so she was, in effect, shirking her punishment, though they had to realize they were no better, letting the former Headmaster taking the fall for them by disappearing, so no one ended up being punished.

They were meeting in an empty classroom. The door was shielded to ensure a private discussion, though Headmistress Umbridge had already warned them about that. She decided to hope it would be over quickly so they would not be caught.

It was the usual three, Potter, Granger, and Weasley, but it seemed his younger sister and a contemporary of hers from Ravenclaw had joined, along with Longbottom. Cho was standing next to Marietta, which she appreciated. She supposed it would be better to spare her the worst of her eventual revenge.

"I'm sure we all know why we're here," she said. "This punishment has gone entirely too far; it's basically bullying and I can't take it anymore. I have no intention of reporting it to anyone if you just do away with the curse," she offered. It was better not to promise not to get revenge, because they would be more likely to see it coming.

"You're not... sorry, though?" Longbottom asked. "Unless I'm mistaken, I was bullied by Malfoy and his friends for a while until Harry taught me to stand up to them. You're not being bulled, though, since you actually did something."

"That was not part of the discussion we had earlier," she deflected. "For the record, I revealed nothing specific about who was leading the Defense Association." In truth, she remembered being in something of a mental haze at the time, but she might as well take credit for it.

"Getting cold feet at the last possible moment doesn't count for anything," Potter said. It looked like he had to think about it before saying it. "This punishment wasn't my idea, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't even resemble bullying and it's totally justified." The Weasley girl agreed with him, reminding everyone they could have gone to Azkaban. Marietta rolled her eyes involuntarily.

"Well, our discussion, for those who were not present, pertained to whether or not I had been punished enough. Davies has already seen me naked."

"Well there's a lot more where that came-" Granger shushed her red-headed friend.

"Let him speak." Everyone looked at the Ravenclaw wizard, who had only just come in. "Did you see her breasts at all?"

"Yeah, they were pretty nice, I recall. I didn't wake up that morning and expect to see that." It seemed like everyone was considering his words carefully.

"Does she have any moles or anything?" Longbottom asked. "Anything that stood out?"

"What about Nargles?" Lovegood asked.

"I didn't see any moles or scars." Marietta still wanted nothing more than to be dead, but at least he had that right. "I don't know about Nargles."

"Well, what was her reaction like?" Cho asked. "She told us she was really embarrassed and covered herself immediately."

"I don't remember anything like that. She just sort of stood there so I could have a good look."

If she had been eating anything, she would have choked. Her eyes were darting around the room, her mind moving with even greater speed, wondering whether or not she should say anything- no, of course she had to say something, but what? He was remembering the wrong time!

"I'm sorry, did I hear you correctly?" Granger asked. "She stood there and let you see them?"

"Yeah, seemed to be the whole point of the venture," Davies explained. "We were in a broom closet and everything."

"You weren't meant to tell them that!" Marietta shrieked, losing what was left of her composure.

"Fucking slag," Weasley commented. It looked like his friends did not approve of his language, but none were disagreeing.

"You're not being punished at all!" his younger sister declared. Longbottom was nodding along. "This is exactly your sort of thing, isn't it? You know, I heard about that whole scene you made at the library- what was it? 'Where can I get my quim stuffed?' How else do you explain that?"

"That was the curse!" she cried, her skirt disappearing. Her hands went down immediately, and she wished for her wand, though she knew it was in her schoolbag.

"I mean, why bother with that?" Potter asked. "Does it make a difference if we're all here?" Granger was still hung up on her question to Madam Pince.

"Did she really say that? In a _library?_ " The younger witch nodded.

"I have it on good authority. She was also naked from the waist down, and covering her arse with her schoolbag."

"What was I meant to do?" she cried. "I didn't know asking for help would cause the curse to go off-" Her shirt disappeared, exposing her breasts to everyone in the room.

"There you go, saying it was the curse again," the Weasley girl commented. "Say, Hermione, does it go off even when she's not telling the truth?"

"I'm afraid so. It is quite possible that she removed her skirt just to have that against us later. Was she wearing knickers, or could anyone tell?"

"Most people were looking away at that point, the way I heard it."

"That's a lie!" Marietta shrieked. "Everyone was staring at me, I could feel it!"

"There's no need to brag," Cho said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Were you checking to see if people were looking or not?"

"Of course I didn't want to look to see if anyone-"

"Well, then you couldn't have known," Granger decided. "You just decided everyone was staring at you because that was your objective in the first place."

"No!"

"That's really disgusting," Lovegood said. "You might be even worse than the Snarglepuss, before it calms itself down eating moon frogs."

"I didn't want this!" she shrieked, not knowing what else to say. It was the worst experience of her life so far, being stripped naked in front of all of them, and then to have them all conclude she was some kind of pervert? She wanted to die. At the same time, however, she could not die, because then she would never have her revenge.

"All right, I've made my decision," Potter said. "You'll stay like that for the rest of the year. Maybe you like it, but the teachers won't and you won't be able to explain it to them."

The rest of them left her there with Cho as she started to sink to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. She was simultaneously exposed and covered, smeared by horrible lies. She knew, of course, that it was all an elaborate misunderstanding, and that everything would have been fine if Davies had just told them about that time in Transfiguration, but now they all believed it, and she would not be surprised if they told the whole rest of the school.

"It's okay," her friend said, putting a hand on her bare shoulder. Her skirt came back, but she did not bother to stand up, only to move her hands up. "They just don't understand that some people are a little different."

"I'm not like that..." Marietta had thought the worst thing that could happen was being stripped in the Great Hall, but at least then she would be the victim. Now they would tell everyone she had been naked from the waist down in the middle of the library, and she would be unable to explain why, making her the perpetrator.

"No, really, you don't have to say anything to me. I understand, really." She looked up. "I know things are a little different, since he and I are supposed to be dating, but, well sometimes I imagine the look on Harry's face when I think about taking my shirt off for him. I would think most witches have thoughts of that nature."

"Well, I don't!" she objected, burying her face in her knees. "I'm just not like that. I don't have any desire at all to be naked, or to see anyone else naked."

Cho responded only by patting her on the shoulder again before deciding to leave her alone. Her shirt reappeared. It was at times like these she wondered if the only logic to the curse was that it would torment her as much as possible, but she supposed that even if it were proven to be random, she would be inclined to see it as having some kind of pattern. There would be no randomness involved with her revenge, however.

Formulating more plans, she suddenly realized that as depraved as her enemies were, they might think being stripped in front of each other was actually a tame punishment, so she would have to come up with additional components to account for that. Even if they called her nasty names for what they believed her to be, they were the ones who did this to her in the first place.

Delving back into her research the moment she returned to the dormitory, she realized she already had all her assignments done, while everyone else was still working. She had hoped to receive a pass from Professor Umbridge for the rest of the year, but apparently she still needed to do her essays for Defense, though that was always easy, since whatever the question was she needed only write down whatever the most likely response was according to her own common sense. It was the other teachers that handed out material requiring effort.

She practiced several spells for the rest of the day after she was done with her assignments and research, and was relatively satisfied with each of them. Ordinarily she would spend her Sundays with Cho, but that ship had more or less sailed. Her friend might deserve only a tiny fraction of the revenge that was due the rest of the group, but it would be unfair to let her escape justice entirely. As she was mulling it over, her underthings were rapidly switching between existing and not existing. It was a touch uncomfortable, as well as distracting, so she considered removing them entirely, but that could wait until she had a chance. Besides, the unusual behavior stopped at some point.

The following day, it started back up in class.

Marietta had taken a seat as far to the rear of the room as she could still hear the teacher, the better to prove she did not want to be seen by anyone, despite the whispers going around. She had her schoolbag on her desk again, but that hardly stopped her underthings from bothering her. It was enough to make her wonder if the curse was getting jittery or something. Granger claimed to have modified it to make it milder, but there might have been an issue with targeting individual articles of clothing, which caused it to be less than perfect in execution.

Between classes, when they had returned, she ducked into a broom closet and removed them, putting them in her bag. They would be within reach if her shirt or skirt disappeared, but concealed within her cloak until then. She felt strangely comfortable walking out, despite not having anything under her clothes, but she had heard of simple charms that made such a thing a more sanitary experience. For some pure bloods, the mere concept of wearing underthings was entirely too muggle-ish, thus the charms.

In her next class her skirt disappeared, but she was sitting in the back, so it was none too great of a problem. She found herself grateful that the desks and tables were covered in front, but that was a necessity with the unreasonably short skirts the witches were wearing, where it would have only been welcome if they had sub-knee skirts. Her own reappeared before the end of class, which might have been her most convenient disrobing to date, and if a lack of concern could have shown on her face, it would have.

She went to her next class without missing a beat, confident that her underthings were not appearing and disappearing in her bag, because they were not on her. She had watched her wardrobe a few times, and thus far nothing from there had ever made itself scarce. She got through her next class without any trouble, then stopped at another broom closet. It was at least worth trying to put fully dress herself again, if for no other reason than to see what would happen, but the door would not open. She cast the unlocking charm, and the door briefly cracked open, but then it closed again.

"Oh, so that's how it's going to be, isn't it?" she asked. "I'll bet you're hiding in there because you're breaking rules." Unlocking the door and yanking on it before anyone could react, she saw a witch and a wizard in unacceptably close proximity. "That's definitely against the rules," she said. "According to Professor Umbridge, you're supposed to be eight inches apart at all times."

"Bugger off, Edgecombe," the wizard said, trying to close the door again. "It's not like we were looking for a third." She waved her wand, keeping it from closing. It seemed some of the passers by were staring, but there was nothing to be done about that.

"You're making a scene," the witch said, getting out her own wand. Marietta made a tactical retreat. It was better to recruit a professor's help with that sort of thing, and she had class anyway. In her next class, she tried to raise her hand, but then Weasley pointed out she was lacking a shirt. Covering herself with her cloak quickly, she wondered why he had taken the seat next to her when she had placed herself as far to the back of the room as she could.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, whispering and looking around. "Were you just waiting for me to call attention to myself?"

"What? No, why would I warn you?" he asked. "I guess I could just rat you out now..."

"No-" she said, reaching a hand out as far as she dared. "Please, anything but that..."

"I don't see why you'd mind. You went and showed off to Davies, didn't you? Well, why is your shirt off now?"

"You know why."

"Yeah, I know. It's because you can't get enough attention with it on." She was trying to keep her eyes to the front of the room lest she miss something, or be noticed having a conversation with another student.

"No, it's the curse!" she said, finding herself naked. With the cloak on, though, she was fine for the moment.

"What was that, then? Was that the curse as well?"

"Please stop talking to me; someone will hear us..." she begged, cutting herself off. She could swear she saw one of his awful friends looking over.

When at last the class got out, she was forced to sit there waiting for her clothes to return, but they did not. She sighed, attempting a disillusionment charm. Feeling it working, she got up to leave just before the next class filed in, figuring she would be late for the next class, if she appeared in it at all. Walking slowly to allow the spell to update itself to her surroundings, she passed by a large mirror in a corridor, where she discovered the damnable charm had only made her an assortment of different colors, leaving her body mostly on full display, though she wore a cloak.

Marietta stared at the bizarre version of herself for a moment, unable to look away. Anyone could tell she was nude, but no one could tell who she was, even with the Ravenclaw patch on her cloak. Quickly ducking into the nearest closet, a laundry arrangement for house elves, she found she was not alone in her hiding place.

"Hello," she said. "Are you quite able to retrieve a uniform for me?"

"Oh, yes, yes, that's part of the job description!" The creature seemed overly cheerful for a slave. "What kind of uniform would you like?"

"A- well, I would like a witch's uniform in my size- if you could make the skirt a little longer, though, I would appreciate that." She thought about how her own uniform would likely reappear soon, but she had already confirmed that it would just be over or under her existing uniform, like her underthings. A thought came to her. If she could somehow key one uniform to reappear as the other disappeared, she could avert the punishment entirely. There was a complication, though, that her underthings were always at a different layer, meaning there was no reason for them to occupy the same space at the same time, whilst her uniform ran the risk of being indexed at the same layer.

"Here it is!" the house elf announced. "One uniform, stretched for length!"

"Oh, that wasn't what I- actually, thank you, this is perfect," she said, taking the thin uniform. She put it on and canceled her mostly failed Disillusionment Charm as she went back out into the corridor, going to the class late. The idea was that without anything under her normal uniform, the alternate would serve as a lower layer. As long as she kept her cloak on, no one would notice the upper layer appearing or disappearing.

Getting to her next class, the lower layer was flickering, but she paid it no mind. It was not worth removing, since it would actually look normal in the event the upper layer disappeared. She noticed that Lovegood was there, who waved when she looked at her. Marietta smirked. With the curse evaded, all that was left was her revenge.


	7. The Downsides to Having A Rumor Mill

Marietta was eating lunch when she felt her shirt disappear, but it was no matter. She was already wearing another just like it. She finished lunch and walked out, her shirt reappearing almost immediately. It was worth wondering whether the curse was getting confused, or if she had just finally thwarted it, but in either event it would not do to let her enemies know. If they figured out she was skirting around their curse, she would likely just be punished in some other way, possibly something that would prevent her from getting revenge.

Once her classes were over she continued to practice the Disillusionment Charm in the library, deciding she was further along with it than anything else and it was better to have one spell mastered than two or three half-decent. Marietta suspected her second layer could still disappear, though it had not yet done so thus far. If it did, of course, she could always go back to the school's servants and ask for an even thinner uniform to serve as a third layer, but she guessed that would bring with it the practical issue of needing to be repaired more frequently.

Lost in a book, she almost did not notice her shirt disappearing, along with the second layer. Quietly, she supposed that meant the curse knew perfectly well she had a second layer, if it was a more useful one than what she had before. She decided against disillusioning herself, as she still had books out and it might prompt someone to come and sit on her. Propping up the books, she made an effective little wall in her corner of the library, though she guessed that anyone who saw it might have thought Granger was there.

"It makes no difference. I am here to beat her at her own game, not invent my own. That would be a complete waste of time." Sitting perfectly still as she read, she heard something as soon as she stopped muttering to herself. A handful of younger students were talking in hushed tones about 'the school slag', which she presumed to be herself. Rolling her eyes, she knew better than to try to set them straight, since she would only expose herself in the process.

"I heard she's obsessed with showing off to everyone," one of the younger wizards said.

"I heard she's already done it in front of a bunch of people," another wizard said.

"Roger Davies said she's got nice-" a witch started. Marietta really wanted to hex her, but decided she was probably just being pulled along by the others. "Anyway, we should steer clear of her."

"Absolutely," one of the wizards agreed. "We just should also keep track of where she is, so we can avoid her."

"I never thought of it that way. Is there a good way of telling where she is?"

"There's a spell called the Follow Me Charm. Apparently everyone who knows about the spell, knows where whoever it is at all times."

"If we ever see her, we'll have to cast it on her," the witch decided. "That would make her the easiest to avoid."

"Yes, that's why we'll get her with it."

Marietta's eyes were rather like a cheese wheel in the foothills. She knew precisely why the wizards wanted to hit her with such a charm, and it was somewhat flattering. Generally, she took no pride in appearances, but the insults along those lines that she had recently suffered were entirely too much to bear, and she would have to factor them into her revenge. Looking over the stack of books, open in front of her or otherwise, she saw there were no younger students gathered.

"To think, they have the nerve to say I'm unattractive," she muttered, putting her nose back in a book. "-as if that would bother me. Of course, it's clearly quite the opposite, as a pair of younger teenage boys have expressed a desire to merely look at me." She remembered Davies complimenting her body, but that was just too filthy of a thing to have in her mind for any length of time. Both of her shirts reappeared after a few hours, and she noticed to her chagrin that she was allowing herself to grow comfortable while exposed in public, as long as no one could see her.

Before the curse had ruined her life, she doubted she had ever been naked outside of the shower, and then only briefly. There was very little worse for her than the state of nudity, and she was willing to stand by that. Marietta cursed her adaptability.

Leaving the library in the evening, she saw she was walking behind an older, dark-skinned boy who might have been a friend of the Weasley Terrors. She scrunched up her nose, but decided to think no more of it. The twins were long gone from the school, and she doubted anyone remembered them fondly. To her surprise, he ducked into an empty classroom right as both her skirts disappeared. She quickly applied the Disillusionment Charm, which turned out somewhat better than last time, but it was a wonder why two layers disappeared at the same time.

Deciding it was better to get out of the way than run into anyone else leaving the library, she went into the spare classroom, confident that if she remained still, she could not be seen. Marietta was surprised to find there was a witch already in there, though the thought crossed her mind that she might be from the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which would explain how they would know each other.

She went back to the door, deciding she wanted none of what was going on, but the witch waved her wand, closing it and locking it. It was not as if that would keep her from escaping, but it would keep her from escaping unnoticed, which would practically defeat the purpose. If they saw the door open, they would just barely see her go through it, meaning they would know there was a pervert going around spying on everyone from under a concealing spell. To make matters worse, she could see how the wizard at the very least would have already heard the rumors about her.

The two of them were merely kissing at first, which was grudgingly tolerable, since she had seen her parents do it once or twice, but these two were going about it entirely differently. It was disgusting, frankly, but rather like a train wreck she found she could not look away. To make matters worse, as if they could be any worse, the pair of them started getting- 'touchy feely' with each other. It was the closest approximation to a descriptor she could manage without gagging. They were both sitting on a desk now, and the wizard's hand started going for the witch's skirt, though she swatted it away.

"At last you develop a modicum of sense-" Marietta started whispering before noticing she was smiling. Her eyes widened. The mere possibility of enjoying the proximate touch of a wizard escaped her. She concluded that there was some joke she was missing. Gryffindors must have a bizarre sense of humor.

There was a sound outside the door, which distracted them long enough for her to open it and get out, not closing it in hopes they would think someone accidentally opened it from outside, saw them, and left. It was very much what she wished she could have done, but that ship had sailed. Though she was almost certain she had been concealed the whole way, her skirts had still yet to reappear, except when she went up to the dormitory, and got in bed before cancelling the Disillusionment Charm. She noticed Cho in her usual bed. The room was otherwise unoccupied.

"How was your day?" she asked.

"It was... interesting. I learned that there are younger students who have already heard malicious rumors about me, so I have your friends to thank for that." If she had intended to make her friend feel guilty, her efforts would have failed.

"Oh, did they hear you like to be naked in public?" she asked. "Well, it was going to get out sooner or later. You can't go around exposing yourself and expect yourself to stay hidden. It rather seems a contradiction of terms." She shrugged. "Ah, well, who am I to judge? My date with Harry went well, I think."

"Oh?" It was curious how spending time with a wizard could possibly go well.

"In the aftermath of nearly going to prison, it seemed he was worried I would 'take your side' as it were, but I decided that I had to be fair, and that I would have to treat anyone who brought on that punishment the same way. In truth, it was a little hard for me at the beginning, but today I told him that it's much easier, since I now understand that at least a part of you enjoys this sort of thing. Now I can support you without worrying about being disloyal."

Marietta wanted to scowl, but apart from being a friend of hers, Cho was still her best bet at getting her curse removed. It had been proven that her safeguard was not perfectly effective, as she had hoped, so she still needed some way of permanently removing the root cause. Getting on the witch's bad side by revealing the way she felt was counterproductive.

"I... well, you may believe that I do not suffer from embarrassment if it suits you, but the punishment remains monstrously inconvenient. I am constantly on the verge of being thrown out of school."

"Oh, well, why don't you just tell the teachers that you can't help it? You could tell your favorite Headmistress," she suggested.

"I could, but then I would be thrown out anyway. Even if they somehow managed to figure out that I was cursed without my help, for the betterment of the other students it would still be better to throw me out. Besides, enough of them likely believe everything that Potter and his friends are saying about me. If I were to march into a teacher's office naked and start saying things that came out lewd, it would be all they needed."

"Yeah, I suppose."

Marietta could tell her friend was not really thinking about it and just making conversation. She had a habit of not thinking things through, like when she got the both of them to join the Defense Association in the first place, without thinking that she would do the smart thing and get them out. She rolled her eyes. Having a slow-witted friend was the least of her worries.

In truth, she had been interested in learning practical magic, up to and including what she was researching presently, and she had believed in some corner of her mind that when the regulation was passed, it would really only be state enemies or attention seekers like the Gryffindors who would not be permitted. That would have been more than reasonable, but the Defense Professor appeared to have to apply the rule to everyone. She hoped some of the bad actors would have been punished especially, but that was also not to be.

The following day, she was in class again and made sure to sit as far back as possible, but she still received the occasional backward glance. It was enough that she doubted she would notice it if someone turned around and hexed her, but she was normally not very attentive to the actions of lesser students. She cared very little about what they did with their lives, and they made it obvious to her more than often enough that she was better off not knowing, as was the case with that awful wizard, whom she should have assumed would be up to no good, being an associate of the Weasleys. Hogwarts had never experienced such a great day as when they left, though they made sure their exit was as annoying and problematic as possible.

More than anything, though, she wished their younger siblings had gone with them. They were enough of a curse when they were part of the Defense Association, always breaking rules this way and that, but now they had taken positions near the forefront of the rumors about her. Marietta looked down at her books and sighed. In the past few days, she might have learned fewer new spells than terms the Weasleys had used for 'slut'.

At least half of them had to be invented on the spot, and that only annoyed her more.


	8. Detention with the Dead

Marietta had managed to avoid any further complications with running into wizards doing absolutely inappropriate things to witches, but her clothes either appearing or disappearing always seemed to get people's attention. She wanted none of it, to be sure, since she needed her revenge to come as a surprise and it was bad enough that she was being punished in the first place, but the teachers had already started to try to talk to her about it. McGonagall was first.

Apparently a concerned Gryffindor by the name of Parvati Patil thought it was simply dreadful, that was, her habit of flaunting the uniform regulation. She knew- Marietta did not know how, but she knew that she was not wearing underthings, but had replaced them with a thinner, second uniform. According to those who knew the Transfiguration teacher, technically the proper thing would have been to go to Professor Flitwick, but he would only have asked her to take care of it. So much as bringing up a female student's approach to the dress code was a good way for a male teacher to get fired.

"As it should be," she had muttered to herself as she found the office where she was to have her pointless talk. Her objective was simple. She would lie as much as necessary, and get out of there.

"Miss Edgecombe, have a seat." She did. "I do not know how it came to the attention of one of my fifth-years, yet she reported to me that you have come up with an... interesting interpretation of the uniform."

"That's true, Professor. I see no sense in denying it. I would like to note that nothing in the letter of the ruling bars a witch from wearing two identical uniforms simultaneously."

"I am aware that your mother and father have had some issue with the uniform in the past."

"I am aware that Parvati Patil decided to escalate this matter for no apparent reason," she responded. She could confirm for the teacher that she was acting in protest, but then there was the chance that her parents would be informed. "Her sister let it slip in the Ravenclaw common room."

"Ah. Perhaps, you will find there are rules that do not have no apparent reason for being in place."

Marietta instantly knew she was cornered.

"It seems you would allow me to continue. Very well; it was I who wanted to have this discussion. I recommend going forward that you refrain from drawing attention to yourself with additional layers of uniform."

"That was not my intention, Professor," she decided, faking a bit more respect than before. While she truly appreciated Professor McGonagall's devotion to the rules, they were the entirely wrong rules, not the ones her mother and father had suggested, or the ones that Headmistress Umbridge enforced. "I have actually undertaken this measure to draw attention away from myself."

"I see. Ordinarily, this is accomplished by mimicking one's surroundings, or perhaps becoming a registered Animagus. Perhaps you could shed some light on your more controversial strategy."

"It has been suggested for years, and recently floated by the current head of the school, that our uniform should be designed to more effectively shield us from the wizarding gaze," she started. The older witch across from her let out the tiniest of sighs. "I decided that it was best to be ahead of the curve."

"Whatever your intentions," the teacher started. "The result has been more attention. None of my students so much as mentioned you before yesterday. If I did not remember every name I called out for the Sorting in all my years of teaching, I might not have remembered you myself."

Marietta resisted the urge to hang her head. She could simply not believe the Transfiguration teacher had not noticed her exemplary efforts- but then again, she was one of Dumbledore's people, and it stood to reason she would go along with whatever his army wanted. Her urge to hang her head was replaced with an urge to squint with incredulity, but she resisted that as well.

"In that event, they should be forbidden from staring."

"Miss Edgecombe, every other witch complies with the uniform without complaint or otherwise issue. You will obey the rules as they do or face consequences. Is it possible for me to assume you will change your costume if you lose points?"

"I am afraid that would be correct."

"Then I must ask you to accompany me for a detention after classes for the week. My hope is that you will learn a lesson about rule-breaking."

Marietta found herself fighting ever more furiously against the urge to scowl as she walked out. It was the others who needed to, and had yet to, learn a lesson about rule-breaking! She counted herself lucky no part of her uniform disappeared while in the Deputy Headmistress's office, but it would have at least explained her predicament without her having to say anything. It was already her suspicion that if she tried to get around the rule in any way, the result would be the same- that was what the incident in the library taught her.

She decided to spend her spare time around the Slytherins. A few of them had made up the entirety of the High Inquisitorial Squad, an admirable position and one she would have selected had it not been for Cho getting her to join the enemy. She reminded herself that her friend would be getting a lighter punishment, but a punishment nonetheless. There were lessons she needed to learn and there was no excuse for not having learned them yet. Spending time with Malfoy and his friends would likely keep her tormentors away, and they were unlikely to believe any rumors that could be traced back to the Defense Association.

"Edgecombe?" one of them asked as she approached the table. "You're the one who ratted out the blood traitors. Good show." She did not know the witch's name, but joined her all the same.

"Is there anyone in this House who associates with any of them?" she asked. "I rather like to avoid their sort."

"Hmm... I believe some of us will talk to Ravenclaws as I talk to you, so there may be someone who would talk to Chang or Luna. Do you have anything against them?"

"The former, only a little, the latter, a great deal- suffice to say I do not like the group in general, but there are better and worse members." The witch nodded.

"I'm Daphne Greengrass," she said. "You may have heard of me."

"I believe I have," Marietta said. "I haven't heard much about you, though. Perhaps you can fill me in."

The Slytherin witch looked somewhat snubbed.

"The point, Edgecombe, of a reputation is that it precedes you. I shall have you know, however, that I am quite reproachful and my heart is cold as ice."

"Interesting." She nodded, not understanding. If all she did was turn down wizards, how was that not the standard? Her mother and father both admitted that children were only born out of lapses in judgement. She should think that most reasonable witches would have good enough sense. "Do you like to conduct independent research?"

"Of course. I already know the most likely pairings of every witch and wizard over the age of fourteen. Did you know that your friend Cho will soon break it off with Potter?"

"I... suspected as much."

"It truly is destiny, but I shall do nothing to intervene." Marietta blinked. If it were destiny, would she not be powerless to intervene?

She spent the rest of the time studying quietly before she had to turn in. At one point her outer layer disappeared, which might have made her feel naked a week ago, but her inner layer was equally serviceable, and was bolstered by the time she returned to Ravenclaw Tower. Her clothes disappeared again as she went into the shower, but that was no particular issue, and she set about washing herself. She had many theories as to how the curse might not actually be random, since randomness itself could not be proven to actually exist, but it seemed as inclined to convenience as inconvenience, so that could hardly be the explanation.

Deciding to start timing her appearances and disappearances, in case there was some time interval or some specific hour, she could eliminate most of the likely causes if proven wrong there. She had done more reading on a few different subjects and decided she had a substantially better understanding of the theory that went into most of the spells she was trying to cast.

It would have been a perfect night during which she would sleep in perfect tranquility if she could not plainly hear one of the witches playing with herself. Marietta could lie there and be appalled that no one else was saying anything, but perhaps they were all asleep. Either way, the sound was unmistakable. She could only wonder what could drive a witch to hurt herself so, to put her through such discomfort and suffering that she would moan like that. Her parents had advised her in no uncertain terms at the age of seven that she was not to touch herself except in the event of a medical emergency, and under those circumstances they would most likely be there to give her permission. Additionally, they could imagine no medical emergency that would require her to touch herself, so she might as well write it off entirely.

The following day, after classes she reported to her detention. Professor McGonagall would not know whether she had changed her uniform or not, and there was no decorous way of checking, so she would simply go to her assigned punishment as long as it was scheduled. She brought her books with her, and it gave her the opportunity to be alone in a classroom, so it was really not all bad. Officially, whoever assigned the punishment was supposed to watch her, but she delegated the Gryffindor Prefects, since she had other responsibilities as Deputy Headmistress.

"Granger," Marietta said. She had not slept properly, so she expected to find herself more peeved than normal.

"Edgecombe," the other witch replied. She took a seat on the opposite side of the room in the back row, where she had chosen the front row, the better to avoid being seen too clearly by passing students. Her cloak disappeared. "I hope you don't intend to make a habit of that."

"That wasn't my doing and you know it. I won't even be telling you anything-" she started, turning around. There was a ghost next to her, that of Sir Nicholas. She clammed up. Out of all the ghosts in Hogwarts, despite the fact that he represented Gryffindor, she actually respected him the most. He always seemed so proper.

"Apparently, our Head of House knows I have something against you, and decided not to have me watch you alone. I expect there will be no need for him to interfere, though. I only intend to do my work here."

"Of course," she sneered. "You know perfectly well that I obey the rules. I would never leave during detention and you know it."

Granger squinted back at her as she turned around again.

"Edgecombe, when one rule contradicts another, you have to pick which one to follow. That was something I learned in first year. I don't blame most people for not knowing it; most people don't have Harry or Ron for friends."

"Well, of course, the difference is, Granger, some people have no business making up rules because it's not their job, and they have no business making up punishments for their violation because that's also not their job. Our job was to study the approved material-"

"I was not finished. The rules I chose to follow were the rules I believed to be more important, not those handed to me by the most powerful governing bodies. And the rule I chose to follow before all the others is that you have to stand up for what's right, even when everyone else tells you it's wrong. I was right in believing that rules were what held everything together, but I've lost a lot of faith in the people making the rules over the years."

Marietta rolled her eyes again. For the record, she never had faith in Dumbledore's ability to make rules, but whilst he had been Headmaster, she had treated him with the proper respect. She just wished everyone else would do the same for the current administration.


	9. Shirking Punishments and Avoiding Detection

She ignored whatever else the other witch was saying, though she noticed her outer skirt disappeared, which annoyed her.

"Oh, is that how you're doing it? You have another skirt on under your normal skirt? Hm. One could almost say you were shirking the punishment."

"Interesting," she commented, still determined to ignore her.

"Why would you do that?" Granger asked. "You know that if you shirked it entirely, we would have to think of some other punishment, and I can be almost certain you will enjoy it substantially less."

"I don't like it when my clothes disappear because you cursed me-" she stared back angrily as her skirt lower skirt disappeared. There was no way that her mortal enemy had not set up her current circumstances. "This is all your fault!" she accused. It seemed Sir Nicholas was quite unable to look away, even as her outer shirt disappeared. Marietta sat back down angrily, trying to come up with some way of communicating to the ghost that it was the fault of the curse, but she was only making it worse for herself. He had already directed several halting, uncertain questions to her regarding her change in costume. At some point he mercifully gave up, but she came up with a lie. She had to tell it, after all, since she had gone through so much trouble for the silence of that ghost.

"Stop vanishing my clothes!" she ordered, causing the specter to turn to Granger.

"Are you accusing me of actively removing them?" she asked as though nonplussed. "Would not Sir Nicholas have seen me?"

"You could have done it without his notice!" she accused.

"She did not," the ghost verified. "You, however, seem to believe that as well. How is it that your friend has cursed you?"

"She cursed me with desire to suck you off!" Marietta explained. "I want nothing more than to take your great manhood down my throat, please you to the very core of your essence, until your release is so great you could pass on from the corporeal world!"

"Excuse me. I must... be away. Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say."

Granger's mouth was hanging open as she covered her own.

"Edgecombe!" she scolded. "You know he doesn't appreciate that kind of joke!"

"I wasn't joking!" she shrieked right back as the ghost floated through the ceiling.

"How dare you proposition a ghost! For the record, that has never once happened, not in all the years Hogwarts has stood. First you have the audacity to show him-"

"You know what that was, that was the curse!" she screamed, this time not afraid of repercussions. There was a pause.

"For the record, you never know who might be listening. There might have been people on the moon who did not hear you say that just now."

"Well, evidently no one who did not already know heard it, because otherwise-" She looked down to notice her shirts were both gone. "When did that happen?!" she demanded.

"After you screamed that you were cursed. I'm sure whoever was passing by this room enjoyed being frightened half to death. At any rate, you have now offered to fellate a ghost, and as annoyed as I am, I cannot help but wonder how you intend to accomplish that."

"I don't intend to accomplish that. As soon as I go back and tell him-"

"If you tell him that it was the curse, I can only imagine what might happen to you."

"I know that- obviously, I shall not tell him it was the curse. I... just have to tell him that it's impossible, so I can't."

"Really? You sounded so sure of yourself earlier."

"That was the curse," Marietta whispered.

"That's a more appropriate volume for talking about that little thing. It's almost as if you begin to understand your situation. Anyway, before Sir Nicholas goes around telling the other ghosts you offered yourself to him to get his hopes up, I would recommend you find some way of making good on your promise."

"This wasn't part of my punishment," she muttered, scowling.

"Neither was shirking it. Anyway, I recommend checking out _Temporary Incorporeality and Other Nearly Useless Spells._ It's not in the Restricted Section because Madam Pince thinks it's a load of hogwash, but I strongly recommend it."

"Is this like that other book you recommended?" She smirked. "Ha! You thought I would fall for the same trick twice."

"I don't remember recommending a book to you. I only told her to mention it to you if you asked for a book on removing curses, or if you asked about anything I had checked out recently." Granger shrugged. "Anyway, this book is definitely real, and I expect you to find it without too much difficulty."

Marietta waited for her mortal enemy to leave the room before darting out herself. Her inner layer had come back right as she turned around, so she still had something to get her to the library. It seemed reasonable that there was no lie in the statement, since it would suit Granger to make her do the unthinkable with a ghost, but she would still test the book for curses and charms before touching it. She reached the library before closing, ignoring the uncomfortable stare of the librarian as she looked through the appropriate section. Finding the book, she tested it extensively before flipping through it. There were some almost interesting methods of casting spells without being noticed, but she found the intended subject without unnecessary delay.

"Once I master this topic, I can tell the ghost that I did intend to... fellate him, but that awful Prefect threatened to tell everyone if I did." She nodded. It was a faultless excuse. She allowed some of the ghosts to pass over her without bothering them, probably seeing what she was researching. It was perfectly possible she would just die on the spot if they started to spread around the notion that she was going to do anything untoward with one of their numbers, but she imagined rumors were already spreading, and something ridiculous like that was a low priority. The average student and probably the average teacher most likely thought it was impossible to touch a ghost, meaning they would dismiss the idea by default.

She was going to have to do something about the rumor of her going around naked. It was true, of course, but she was managing it and only a small amount of people had seen her in any capacity so far, and only one who was not related with the Defense Association. Getting revenge against them was important, to be sure, but first she had to start countering the spread of the rumors. It would also make a good dry run for the Imperius Curse.

" _Imperio_ ," she incanted, seeing a lone first-year pass by. The dark magic and its incantation felt truly awful on her lips, but some things just had to be done. "You will tell everyone that the rumors that Marietta Edgecombe is an exhibitionist are completely false." The boy nodded. From his cloak, she could tell he was a Hufflepuff.

"Right away," he said, looking a bit dazed. She wondered if a more experienced witch could keep the curse from being so noticeable. In either case, it seemed to work. She left him to his own devices and went back to the dormitory with notes from the book. Though she was inclined to read something she knew Granger had read, it seemed better to get only what she needed rather than checking it out and going past the librarian in the process. On her way to Ravenclaw Tower, her outer shirt was restored, but as soon as she arrived, it disappeared again.

Rolling her eyes, she went back up the stairs. She could try the dark curse again, but it was better to know the results of her first experiment before she did something differently. Besides, the dormitory was full and she would be quickly caught by anyone who happened to be watching. The spell was not loud, but the incantation was easily recognized, so for her revenge she would have to make sure she got her intended victim alone before she used it.

Marietta finished her revisions and bathed before going to bed. The end of the year was coming up, and next year she would face her N.E.W.T level exams, and she could think of nothing worse than the Ministry examiners learning of her affliction. What she hoped her enemies would not realize was that her revenge was not only an end unto itself; promising to let up was likely the only way she could get out of the curse. Getting away with that, in itself, would be a challenge, but if she still had someone important like Potter under her spell, she stood a chance at keeping the rest of them off her.

The following morning, she went through classes mostly without incident, though for a mere instant her whole upper layer was gone, which was enough to make her squirm. Somehow, she was both grateful and disappointed that she had not grown used to the effect of near-humiliation. It made her head swim, and justifiably so. She tried to sit with the Slytherins at lunch, though they said they were discussing some private matters.

"Oh, those will be more of the secrets they think they're keeping from the rest of the school," she decided, walking off and eating by herself. In truth, she knew little and less about what passed for a secret among them, but it simply could not happen that they kept everything secret. That was something that simply did not happen. Eventually someone would rat them out.

Her outer layer restored itself before her detention, during which neither Sir Nicholas nor Granger were anywhere to be found. Marietta sensed it was because they knew she was unlikely to run out on punishments put in place by those in authority. She worked on a few of the books she had been reading after she finished her assignments, wondering if there were any potions that could facilitate her revenge. The Draught of Living Death was an option, of course, since she could do whatever she wanted to the sleeping, but it was hard to brew, even for a sixth-year of her caliber, and harder to acquire the ingredients.

"Are you using this room?" someone asked. She turned around to see a pair of younger wizards she did not recognize. If she squinted, one of them might have been from the Defense Association, but then she remembered his name was Creevey. She rolled her eyes. They would never have let him join. It was not as if there were no other places to study, but she supposed other students could have been claiming other classrooms.

"I promise not to bother you if you need to use it." They looked at each other, then back at her.

"You promise you won't say anything either?"

"I promise. I really don't care what you do in here."

Both of them gulped as though she would be perturbed by their rupture of her quietude while studying. She would show them how well she could concentrate, of course- they would be surprised by that. Focusing on her reading, she heard them go past her and stop in the far corner of the room. They were muttering something, but she did not care at all what they were saying, she had work to do.

Moments later, she reached the end of a long passage and furtively looked up. It was not as if her curiosity got the better of her, no, she only wished to see how easily she could look at them without being caught. The pair of them were naked and one was bent over the desk.

Screeching and getting her wand out, she applied disillusionment charms to them both as she got her things together and walked out.

"Thanks, Marietta!" one of them called out. "You're actually really nice!"

"Don't mention it!" she screamed back, looking around and making a run for it. She did not encounter any other students until she was at the end of the corridor, and that was when her shirt disappeared. Applying the charm to herself, she was as close to invisible as she could get, but that was not before a few of them caught a glimpse of her. To make matters worse, a fair few of them were wizards. Spreading out over the width of the corridor, they practically corralled her back into the room, where she only hoped they would not catch her. The idea of bumping into one of them was unthinkable. She almost managed not to think of it.


	10. Sharing Secrets with the Slytherins

Marietta had nothing but contempt for Colin Creevey and his little friend, but only because they had to do that sort of thing in front of her. As soon as the other students passed by the door to the classroom where she was hiding, she tried to reapply the Disillusionment Charm, without realizing she already had it, and canceled it in her frustration. The two wizards saw her nearly naked and looked at each other before calmly telling her they were not into her, which nearly made her shriek as she ran out of the room.

She did not think there had been a time in her life where she had ever been quite so angry. It was true that she had been angry before, but the idea that two wizards or any two people would _go at it_ in front of her- somehow the only thing making it worse was the fact that they refused her made it worse. It was inconceivable.

"How could a gross wizard ever not like a well-groomed and washed witch?" she asked herself, fuming. "I never expected them to have anything resembling taste, but they should at least be able to recognize their betters. It has nothing to do with the fact that it was I they turned down," she insisted to no one at all.

At supper she sat with the Slytherins again, though they seemed consumed with some sort of secret plan. Draco Malfoy kept glancing over at her. Marietta said she would not reveal his plans with anyone, least of all the Gryffindors. He continued to seem unsure.

"It's all right, Malfoy, she actually rather hates them," Daphne confirmed. "I'm sure since she hates their way of doing things so much, she would be happy to come along with us."

"As a matter of fact, I would," she decided. "I had planned to study this evening, but I would like to spend time with you, in whatever way would antagonize them the most."

The wizard adopted a brief expression of surprise before nodding. He looked around to the other Slytherins, who were apparently equally puzzled, but otherwise nonplussed. Marietta privately concluded that he had simply not foreseen her cleverness. She was, after all, surpassingly clever to such a degree that those around her mistook it for ignorance, though that mostly stopped in third year when she ceased to associate with the unappreciative.

They finished eating and went down to the dungeons. What had been a larger crowd thinned down to just five of them and the one of her, and they took up residence in an abandoned classroom, deep in the bowels of the school. Malfoy was casting a few charms designed to keep them from being heard while a witch a few years younger than Daphne seemed to be locking the door, applying a sticking charm for good measure. Marietta's earlier displeasure and anger was quickly forgotten. It was as if she had at last found her equals in cleverness.

"What are we doing down here?" she asked.

"Oh, I thought you would never ask. Crabbe and Goyle here are proving their worth." Daphne's expression barely concealed a condescending smirk.

"I see. I might have guessed they would need to do that." Daphne's smile became more sincere.

"Oh, they have their uses." She tossed her hair back and forth a moment. "Not long ago, Draco revealed that he and I have a marriage contract."

"Why? What reason could you ever have to go through with it?" She could not imagine standing next to a wizard in a ceremony. The last time was her Sorting, and she definitely regretted it. Her parents had warned her, but she had no choice because of the alphabet. And to think- he played with her hair! She had never been so demeaned, at least at the time.

"Well?" the other witch asked. "Are we starting?"

"All things in good time," Daphne said. She seemed to have an easy, glacial way of going about things. "That's my sister, Astoria. Draco seemed inclined to have us both, gaining the entire Greengrass fortune in a stroke. He's a little... lacking for that arrangement to be worthwhile, but promises that Crabbe and Goyle will be more than enough for us in the way of companionship." Marietta's brow was knitting. "Oh, do try and keep up. You wouldn't want to miss any of this."

"Of course," she said. "I doubt I could get through that door if I tried."

"You can't, I'm quite sure of it," the Slytherin witch responded. "I owed Anthony Goldstein a favor, and he... well, I'm sure you'll find out."

Her jaw might have dropped as Daphne shuffled off her cloak, divesting herself of the rest of her clothes with a charm. In an instant she had an infinite amount of questions, and she was perfectly certain none of them would be answered if asked. More than anything, though, she was shocked by the surpassing beauty before her. She was aware of no sexual desire within for witches- not that she had any for wizards, and yet she could not help but admire. Her body was like something out of a painting.

Crabbe and Goyle did not merely approach her, they advanced. They had the hungriest looks about them and Marietta longed to shout warnings, to do something, but as soon as she had her wand out, Malfoy expelled it from her hands. He followed that with a silencing charm.

"I'm afraid that anything you do to call attention to our little meeting would be quite the disaster for us," he explained as Daphne knelt before the large wizards. All she could do was look away. She had no desire at all to see what was taking place, and surely they would not make her watch. She made the mistake, however, of walking over in the direction of her wand. This earned her a body-bind spell, as well as being yanked to Astoria's side.

"You won't disrupt them either. Don't think I would agree to this without knowing what I was getting." Marietta could barely hear her over the poetic admiration coming from her older sister.

"Perhaps, whilst they are occupied-" the wizard started.

"Show me on her. You had better be worth _something_."

"Very well. I shall have you know that I am second to none when it comes to technique."

Marietta wanted to scream that she refused to take part in any kind of demonstration, but her voice was gone and he had already started. He removed her uniform, finding it a bit curious before continuing, starting with petting various body parts, which served to make her more sensitive. It seemed the witch watching could tell. She wanted to die from embarrassment as she found out it was by her nipples hardening.

Malfoy responded to her purely physical response by gently tracing a finger over her bare breasts, following the edges of the erogenous zones they represented. She had her legs shut about as tightly as she could manage, and would have managed fine without the body-bind. Feeling some sort of liquid forming between her legs, an unfamiliar sensation, she was frightened at the thought of what could have pricked her, but she was literally spellbound, prevented from looking down. Her face started to go red as the punishment to her already sensitive breasts continued, and her despite her efforts to hold her breath, she caved and inhaled. Her breathing was heavy and warm.

"I think I've seen enough, thank you," Astoria decided. The wizard released her, and she was grateful, as it had felt her punishment had taken an eternity. She had never felt such ghastly sensations before, but her face felt warm rather than cold. "The three of you will be plenty for the two of us to be married to only you."

"Ah, but you have not seen how the others have performed. Let us wait for them to finish." Marietta managed to roll herself away, but she could hear everything. Daphne was screaming more loudly than she wanted to scream, and it went on for what felt like another age. If one thing was certain, it was that all these poor excuses for human beings would suffer the worst punishments she could imagine, but she had more pressing uses for her imagination, like how she was going to get out of there.

At long last, the older sister finished up and undid the body bind with her own wand. She was still naked, as were the wizards who had seen to her, but strangely she wore the most pleased expression. Donning her robes again with another wave of her wand, she left the others to resume their own.

"Astoria, I find I am quite satisfied with this arrangement. Provided you are content to share them with me, I should be content to share alike." Her younger sister nodded.

"Malfoy should provide some amusement as well, so you know. I expect he intends to keep one company while Crabbe and Goyle attend to the other." Marietta's confusion only intensified. The unassailable fact that the older Greengrass could enjoy what she had just undergone could be explained by some rare magical anomaly that only comes around once every thousand years, but for her sister to suffer the same fate- it could still be genetic, she supposed. "Perhaps we should not tell our parents how we came to agree to his proposal, but let us agree to it nonetheless."

"Of course," Daphne agreed. She waved her wand, restoring their prisoner's clothes. "Perhaps it would be better to allow our guest to excuse herself. You will find your wand in the Ravenclaw common room. I would remove the silencing charm, but I find it's quite the improvement."

She scowled, but there was nothing for it. She had, of course, had some expectations for Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, because they had been in the Inquisitorial Squad when it was necessary and when the position of High Inquisitor existed, but there was nothing going for the witches except that they were witches. They had been clever enough, as expected, not drawing the ire of Headmistress Umbridge, but they had used their cleverness to punish her for some unknown offence. When they opened the door for her, she took the opportunity, though her confusion had yet to abate. She had no idea how they meant to get her wand to an area they were not supposed to be able to reach, but that was an entirely irrelevant thing to consider.

What was relevant was her revenge. She doubled down on reading and practicing the temporary incorporeality spell, but not so she could fellate a ghost. One of the obstacles remaining to her was the fact that she could make herself nearly invisible, but she could still be touched, which was infinitely more embarrassing. The means of getting revenge were far more important than what she would do with him, but her first task was to protect herself from further retaliation. Once she became incorporeal, she would be completely unassailable. Getting her wand from where it rested on a table in the common room, she had removed the silencing charm. It was not as if she were bad at nonverbal magic, but trying out new spells was always a challenge without saying the incantation.

" _Illusio._ " Immediately her body was almost entirely incorporeal. A smirk spread across her face. Not only had she managed to circumvent her entire punishment, unjust as it was, she had managed to avoid any future retaliation against her punishments she would justifiably administer to her tormentors. Her grasp on the Imperius Curse, however, had yet to be properly tested, or at least she had yet to go over the test results. Firstly, however, it seemed appropriate to test how untouchable she had made herself. She could not quite pass through doors, as she attempted when trying to get into the girls' dormitory, but neither Cho nor Lovegood seemed to have any idea she was there, even when she touched them.

At length she decided it was possible she registered only as a light wind, which was enough for her original purposes, but for quick escapes she would need to practice and improve. The smirk on her face bordered on being irremovable. Another thing occurred to her; a mechanism of not only further shirking the curse, but keeping her from getting caught while she was out getting her revenge. Marietta just needed the right research material to implement it.


	11. Rumors on Rumors

Marietta had settled on a doubling spell, _Alter Ego_ , which had oddly worked its way into common speech, even among muggles. Mastering it would allow her to leave a clone of herself in class while she was invisible. For all the known purposes of the school, she would be attending classes and taking notes without making anything resembling a scene. In reality, she could escape out of a closed door without opening it.

Before she could learn that, however, she had to find the appropriate research material, and before that she had to actually attend class. In Potions, her inner skirt disappeared, but she thought nothing of it. She had heard of brews that would make her invisible, but it was apparently quite difficult to brew, and all she really had to do was keep her legs together. What concerned her, by contrast, was the rumors.

Ravenclaw had double potions with the Hufflepuffs, and there were whispers that some first or second year had found Justin Finch-Fletchey and Zacharias Smith, and told him that all the rumors about Marietta Edgecombe were true, and that she was easily the sluttiest witch in the castle. It explained the stares she was receiving from both Houses, but what was odd was she had used the Imperius Curse to get the boy to say the exact opposite.

"He must have resisted somehow," she decided at length, remembering from last year that there was some mechanism by which the cursed could avoid doing as instructed. The wizard she thought was Professor Moody laughed at her when she did not succeed, though it seemed like a counter-intuitive lesson in the first place. Why was it ever a good idea not to do as a teacher instructed? She remembered everything making perfect sense when that teacher turned out to be a dark wizard. It was quite fortunate that nothing ever came of the fact that there was a Death Eater in Hogwarts for the better part of the year, and he was most certainly not involved with any sort of plot to revive the most certainly dead Lord Voldemort.

She could hardly help but go red at everyone's stares. Professor Snape shook his head and told her to leave, since she was distracting the class. Wiping a single tear, she accepted her first ever dismissal and swore revenge, first on the younger boy for resisting the Imperius Curse and then on Finch-Fletchey and Smith for spreading the rumor. They would have behaved the same way if they had heard the correct rumor, of course, but one course of action did more damage than the other, making it the worse. The two of them might have been in Potter's group at some point, though he might not have counted them as personal friends, seeing as they did not show up to the meeting where they were supposed to remove her curse.

After her classes, Professor Flitwick overrode Professor McGonagall's detention to call her to his office, a meeting she did not expect to enjoy. He had not wanted to handle the matter himself; that much was evident. The only explanation for why he was taking matters into his own hands was because he believed the rumors. She found herself coming round to the Headmistress's position on the proper places of part-humans and magical creatures of near-human intelligence. If he had never been allowed to teach in a school, she would not have been summoned to his office.

"Professor?" she asked as she walked in. "You wanted to see me?"

"Please, please, come in. It does you no good to act like you have no idea why you are here, dear girl. The rumors about you are quite... ubiquitous." Somehow the word sounded even more silly when squeaked. "Surely your friends have already told you."

"I don't have- well, they know why I already know about it." It seemed better than telling him that Cho had completely betrayed her. To be sure, she was still acting pleasant, but no real friend would have ever believed what they said about her. A strange look passed over the Charms teacher's face.

"Oh, dear me, if it is truly like that it is no small wonder why there are rumors. Please, make no effort to stop the rumors; it will only make them worse. If you would prefer, the teachers can dock points for anyone spreading false accusations about you."

"That would be most appreciated." It was about then she realized that the reason there were rumors about her, in his mind, was because she had no friends. Quietly she supposed that ordinarily, one's friends acted as a defense against such things, spreading good things rather than bad. She did not like the fact that he was taking pity on her, when really it was more correct to say that she had one friend who needed to learn a lesson, but it was enough that the bad actors were being punished, if weakly.

The meeting ended, fortunately without incident. Her outer shirt and her cloak disappeared as she walked through the corridors, but she took it in stride, reaching the library in a normal amount of time. Her outer skirt disappeared as soon as she was in there, but she knew it had nothing to do with reading books, since she had already done plenty of that. Unfortunately, the simplicity ended there.

Her reading material proved more difficult to understand than she would have liked. Creating an illusory copy of herself that would sit there and follow along with the lesson was complicated magic, and there was not a lot of theory on it. What she had in front of her was dense and unforgiving.

Marietta remained in there, reading and taking notes, practicing wand movements every now and then, until even Granger had left, and around then she noticed her inner skirt disappear. There was no one looking at her table, fortunately, and the library was almost empty, so she contented herself with putting her bag on her lap and continuing her study. Hours passed and closing time came, but she decided that if she would disillusion herself to leave, she may as well disillusion herself in order to stay and keep reading. With all the students gone, she could remove the charm. It was weird not being able to see her hands as she turned the pages.

At long last she was alone in her study, and she had no reason to look up whatsoever, meaning she did not do so. It came as quite the surprise when a cough came from in front of her. It was Sir Nicholas.

"Excuse me, Miss Edgecombe, I must apologize for my earlier behavior."

"It's quite alright," she said, faking forgiveness. She usually saw no point in acting angry if she really was angry. There were limits to that, of course; she could not simply keep her anger bottled up forever, but she was having a hard time remembering what the ghost did to offend her. She decided that it must have been the fact that he did not take her side when she was having an argument with Granger.

"No, my dear, I am afraid there is but one way for me to make it up to you. I heard you were practicing a spell that would render you temporarily incorporeal."

"I am, but I run into the problem of finding it hard to test. I can't seem to get it to where I can go through doors, just small spaces and around people. If I had a better idea of what I'm doing wrong..." She trailed off.

"Miss Edgecombe, I think we might be able to help each other. Try the charm with your eyes completely closed." She raised an eyebrow, but went along with it. Perhaps in addition to wand movements, there were physical tasks that could aid in the casting of a spell. She closed her eyes and said the incantation as she waved her wand. "No, open your mouth more on the last syllable. She did as instructed, but instead of drawing in more air her mouth was filled with an impossibly cold foreign object with a distinctly gross flavor. Opening her eyes in shock, it appeared the Gryffindor ghost had his manhood out of his frilly trousers and in her mouth.

If it were possible for her eyes to widen further, they would have, but it also seemed quite impossible for her to resist being violated orally. Like the ghost that made her drop the book, Sir Nicholas seemed to be overriding her will with his own. She thought every protesting thought she could think of, but it did not seem to slow him down.

"Oh, dear, you may find it a bit colder than you expected, but it only feels all the warmer for me... my, has it been a long time indeed..." He continued to invade her throat as he rambled, apparently thrilled by the experience. It seemed she could still control her fingertips, which she wrapped around her wand. She felt as though she could not cast a spell, though she had to try. The spiritual member had not flagged once in its campaign to her stomach, or perhaps her lungs, whichever would be more content to dance to its rhythm.

Finally managing to resist, she cancelled the charm of temporary incorporeality and the ghost traveled through her into the wall behind. She suspected his possibly involuntary control loosened because of his proximity to orgasm, a truly disgusting part of the sex education books she had forced herself to read. It seemed the appeal of oral contact was the simulation of the feeling of copulation without the effort, and the orgasm could just come whenever it pleased. Marietta would probably hurt her eyes if she could roll them with enough force to content her.

Hoping Sir Nicholas was satisfied, at least for the moment, at least enough not to return and bother her again, since she truly had no idea what to do about a ghost, she went back to the dormitory. She suspected that the charm to make her incorporeal could be reversed and make a ghost temporarily corporeal, but it would require further research either way. It sounded like the kind of thing someone would have tried before, but then, she was in a rather unique situation, and she liked to think her cleverness was at least somewhat unique as well.

In the Tower, she passed no one, which was fortunate since her clothes only came back as she went into the girls' dormitory, at which point she decided there was no way it was a complete coincidence. Granger must have used the word 'randomly' either out of a lack of understanding the curse she implemented, or to keep her from figuring out the rule. She supposed that, colloquially, the word could mean 'without any apparent reason', but there was a reason for everything, even if it involved a lot of Arithmancy in the unseen background.

She did her best to get some sleep last night, but her attempts to fall into such a state were interrupted by thinking of suitable ways to get revenge on a ghost. Though she could theoretically turn him corporeal for a moment, she seriously doubted she could kill him. It could wait until the following morning, she told herself, but the occasional thought interrupted her with its genius. She stared over at the other beds, thinking for a moment how lucky Cho was not to be cursed with such a mind, never mind such a curse. Again, she mollified her thoughts of revenge for poor friendship. It was hardly her fault for not being surpassingly intelligent.

Marietta took another moment to watch the other witches in the dorm before falling asleep. For a moment when she came in, she might have detected movement, but that was highly unlikely. Returning to her plans of revenge against the ghost, since that might come back around and help her fall asleep, she decided it was a good thing for all parties that the Grey Lady had thus far done nothing to wrong her.


	12. A Soft, Sympathetic Heart

The following morning, it appeared news had spread about her adventure in the library, so the ghost must have told on her. Under normal circumstances, most people would dismiss the story out of hand, since none of them would bother to learn spells just to have relations with the dead, but people already believed nasty, completely incredible things about her, like the idea that she enjoyed having people look at her naked, which implied she enjoyed having people look at her at all, which was false. It simply offended her sensibilities when Creevey decided to do the impossible and look at another wizard instead of her.

She nearly collided with Susan Bones in a corridor as she made a sharp turn and hastily apologized out of habit as she gathered her things. It escaped her at the moment whether she had ever been involved with the Defense Association, but she was definitely one of their friends. Strangely, she seemed a little sympathetic.

"Are you alright? I hear people have been spreading some... rumors about you." They were going to lunch, so Marietta decided she might as well make a conversation out of it. There was no one else with whom she particularly wanted to sit.

"Well, they're all completely false. I can't believe someone would just go making up things like that." She looked around. "You're in Hufflepuff. Did the first year boy tell you anything directly, or did you hear it from someone else?" The other witch shook her head.

"Rumors are like cursed fire. I don't even know whether I heard the original version or not." It was her turn to look around. "What was this about the Gryffindor ghost?"

"Oh, that's complete nonsense. Anyone could tell you it's impossible to have any kind of sexual contact with a lingering spirit. I honestly have no idea why I would go through the trouble. I cannot imagine what about that I would enjoy."

"I see, well, apparently Hermione Granger told people that you offered to... do something nice for him and some of the younger boys in her House have been asking Sir Nicholas about it ever since. He might have started to worry that they would think she had been lying..."

"Honestly," she said, rolling her eyes. "What could I possibly see in him? He's dead! To make matters worse, he's a wizard, and that means he's gross and always thinking about gross things." Susan pursed her lips.

"Does your dad think about gross things all the time?"

"He's a bit more mature than that," she deflected. "He and my mother have assured me that he's done a lot of work on himself."

"Does my dad think about gross things all the time?"

"I couldn't possibly-"

"Never mind." She exhaled. Marietta's cloak disappeared. "Why is that always happening?"

"It's just a charm I have had to test on myself. It should make things quicker, you know, dressing and all that. I've been trying to get it to go automatically, but..."

"Oh, that sounds useful. I've only noticed it a few times, but some people say that they've noticed it more."

"They could definitely be lying as well. Even though I'm still working it out, it doesn't normally go off in public."

"Is everyone a liar except for you?"

"Sometimes it seems that way, yes." She was closing her eyes as she nodded, keeping herself from rolling them. Cho had moved down a couple spaces on her short list of the thickest witches in Hogwarts. She had a much longer list of the thickest wizards, which was all of them, and they were all tied for the top spot, but that was another matter.

"Oh, well, is it okay if we study together?" Some nugget of information floating around in her head recalled for her that the Hufflepuffs were known for studying the most. They often had large study groups, though she guessed the witch across from her could have done something to put herself out of one. Then, she remembered that Headmistress Umbridge did ban groups of three or more students.

"I would be delighted. I think you and I could be close friends." She was not getting too hopeful with that, but at least Susan would be useful for the time being, going out into public on her behalf. It would be a moot point once she could create a nearly living illusory copy of herself which would remain clothed perpetually, but it would help for the time being. She had already been caught out half-prepared one too many times. From now on, she would have to see everything coming.

"That's great. Do you still have detention? We could study together in there."

"I do, as a matter of fact. If you get a chance, could you bring any material you may know about creating illusions? The section of the library where I've been looking has produced little in the way of results."

"Of course. I'll ask Madam Pince if she knows where I might find something like that. She's always helpful for me."

"That's a relief. She's unfortunately part of the rumor brigade as far as I am concerned." Susan's hand went to her mouth.

"Oh no!" she whispered. "What did she say about you?"

"Let's just say it was something disgusting and lewd that I would never actually say, and that might have contributed to a lot of the other rumors." It appeared the other witch was still curious. "According to her... and I'm only repeating it because you might have heard it... I said I wanted to get my quim stuffed- which is gross, and I would never want that."

"I totally agree. That sounds really gross, and like something I would never want." She was nodding a little too much.

"Truly? I heard you get along well with wizards."

"Platonically, yes, but I would never want to become... involved with one."

"I mean, if you would not get married, which is my intention, then why interact with them at all? What is the point beyond being able to have children?"

No words were spoken for a moment.

"I have to get to class," Susan decided out of nowhere. It was perfectly fair, of course, since they both really did have class, but they had been having a discussion she had not thought she would have with anyone. It was annoying, actually, even with Cho, who had a whole future ahead of her in athletics or academics, preferably the latter, there was still some hint of an inclination to spend the rest of her life with a wizard. She could argue that it would be less to clean up and less by which to be bothered if she took care of an iguana instead, but there was no point.

Marietta went to her next few classes before detention, disillusioning herself in one of them for lack of a skirt, though it was restored later. She was already longing for the ability to remain permanently disillusioned, with a copy of herself to mark her attendance, but that would come in good time; it only gave her more opportunities to think of ways of getting revenge. Potter specifically would have to suffer immensely, to the point where he would wish Voldemort really had come back, but the specific nature of it was unimportant. Vexingly, wizards seemed less sensitive about being naked in public. People would laugh, to be sure, but only if he acted embarrassed. It was another way society was simply fundamentally unfair.

In her last class, someone told her that Professor Sprout wanted to see her, and she said that it was indeed about time, but she would have to wait until after detention unless she wanted to override the detention of another teacher. She was not stupid, after all, and she would not be caught in some easy trap like that. There was no way Professor McGonagall would understand and forgo the opportunity to subtract points; she was one of Dumbledore's people. She heard some of the students in the rows ahead of her whispering about her as they looked back periodically.

"I shall have to do something about that, but what? I could cast the same curse on another student, but I have not improved it since the last time I practiced it, since that was a trial run." She remembered that the first-year boy had told his entire House the opposite of what she had intended. It gave her an idea.

Going through the hallways before detention, she found a younger witch on her own and cast the curse on her. The girl could have been in first or second year, but she was definitely in Slytherin. She hoped that the entire school would take it as more reliable, since it came from a witch.

"What is your wish?"

"Hmm... I suppose it would be quite pointless to have you tell everyone the rumors are false, since they will wonder how you know... I know, what you must do is tell everyone that all the rumors about Daphne Greengrass are not true of her, and are instead true of Marietta Edgecombe. Be sure not to swap the names." Satisfied with her way of reversing it, she went on to detention. This time, she found that Colin Creevey had been appointed to watch her. Apparently, the young wizard was a notorious tattle-tale, always running around with his little camera and taking pictures of everything. She rolled her eyes again. It was the mere thought of tattle tales, this time.

Deciding against asking if he intended to watch her the entire time, she waited for some article of clothing to disappear, but oddly, it was taking a while. She figured she could at least get him to leave the room if her clothes disappeared, but she was willing to go further than that if necessary. He had, after all, already seen her naked.

"Just so you know, I did not come in here naked because I was trying to get in on what you were doing," she obviated. It was truly a wonder why anyone would think that in the first place, but she could guess the younger wizard was pretty thick by default. "I happened to be followed by some unsavory characters who divested me of my clothes with a charm."

"Oh, that sounds terrible," he commented. "Well, not for you, but I would definitely feel awful if people caught me out like that." Marietta resisted the urge to fume. "Did you report them to the authorities?"

"Of course. Now, since this is not working, I shall remove my clothes and see if you find the experience unpleasant enough to leave me unsupervised." She took off her cloak. "I am two years older than you, you know."

"Professor McGonagall asked me to watch you because she thinks Hermione had something to do with setting you up with Nearly-Headless Nick. She decided it was better not to cause any more disturbances or rule-breaking on your part, so she asked me because she figured I would be less susceptible to your charms than most other wizards and less likely to hate you than most witches."

"Granger does not hate me, she is merely jealous of me- secondly, most witches in the castle-"

"I don't know if they all hate you it just seems like a lot of them do. A good amount of my friends are witches, for some reason. They say you're putting on a show for the wizards, well, not me, and they don't like it. It's a cheap way of diverting attention to yourself, and you're kind of bringing them down a bit because you're giving something they have away for free. They've said that no decent wizard will associate with you, which means they won't be associating with any who do, and-"

"I get the point," Marietta interrupted, annoyed that she could not simply explain her situation. She sighed, removing both of her shirts at once. Her revenge would come soon enough, and before that the little witch she cursed should spread around the idea that it was all Greengrass, since she actually deserved to have that spread around about her. If that did not work, she could curse anyone else.

As Colin left the room, she decided she could have used the curse on him, but Professor McGonagall would know the two of them had been alone together. Realistically, she should limit her use, since there were supposed to be recognizable symptoms. A little cough interrupted her thinking.

"Oh..." Susan started. "I didn't know you felt that way, Marietta..."


	13. The Unexplainable, And For Perfectly Good Reason

Marietta hastened to cover herself again, but she struggled with her shirt and Susan closed the distance a little too quickly. All at once the other witch's hands were around her wrists and their lips met. She was too shocked to react, but she just wanted it to stop, the sooner the better. There was this irresistible feeling of wrongness with what was going on. She wanted to appreciate the fact that it was a groomed, clean witch kissing her, but somehow that was impossible.

Trying to scream at her as soon as Susan came up for air, she found herself silenced.

"Shhh... we can't let them hear us," she whispered. "I know most people would probably be fine with it if they learned the truth about me... some people probably even saw it coming. They'd really take it out on you if they caught you in this position, though..." Marietta tried to get out her wand. She was good enough with silent magic to remove a silencing charm, but not without her wand in her hand. Susan smiled as she waved her own wand, her arms flying out to their extremes and her wand clattering to the floor in the process. "I saw how much it turned you on when I held your wrists..." She tried to shake her head, but found herself being kissed again. The witch's hands found their way to her breasts now that she was magically restrained and unable to reach her wand.

The feeling of her erogenous zones being massaged made her feel warm at length, but in her head it was an entirely different sensation than she had when Malfoy did much the same thing. Somehow the fingers touching her were not supposed to be long and delicate; somehow they were not meant to run gently over her skin. Susan was interpreting her struggling as arousal, which caused the girl's fingers to go somewhere else entirely, and that was when her skirts disappeared.

"You're not wearing..." Their lips were locked again, and Marietta found her body was autonomously responding to the intrusion in her sex, the moving fingers dancing with sensitive areas that had never been touched before. She thought she was bleeding at first, but the viscous liquid the other witch raised to her silent lips did not taste like metal. It was herself, she knew, but it was a part of herself she rejected, a part of herself better left unobserved, hidden, forgotten-

She gasped without sound at the forced surge emanating from her dripping body; it felt like a shock charm that Healers used except warm and it left her brain feeling duller than before. Her mouth was hanging open as the other girl worked on her. When at last she waved her wand to allow her to move again, she could not find the will. Marietta desired with ever ounce of spite in her to curse the witch, perhaps even kill her where she stood, but her brain would not tell her body to do anything until it got past the overwhelming sense of violation she felt. It was unlike the feeling of being compared to a younger student in class, it was unlike being told she was in the wrong when she reported Dumbeldore's Army, and somehow it was even worse than the episode with Sir Nicholas.

As Susan expressed a feeling of concern over her non-responsiveness and left, perhaps for Madam Pomfrey, she pondered the wrongness of the sensation. It was distinct from any kind of wrongness she had experienced so far, even the kind against which her parents had cautioned her. If anything, they had at least implied that it would be better if she got involved with a witch, but mostly because anything would be better than getting involved with a wizard. She surprised herself by getting up and walking out, shuffling back to her dormitory with a resigned look of human suffering.

It was not as if she had given up her plans for revenge; if anything there was even more revenge to be had, but she could not find the emotional energy to care about it at the present. Time passed like that, and so she passed the days, going to classes without really knowing or caring where she was. It was neither the year for her O.W.L's nor her N.E.W.T's, but she would prefer, other things equal, to at least pass her exams. She had been dreading a painful conversation with Severus Snape about some imagined offence Daphne had invented to get back at her for some imagined offence, but it never came. When a younger Slytherin witch stood up in the Great Hall and told everyone that the rumors about her were actually true of Marietta, she rolled her eyes and got out a length of parchment, adding another name.

She had come up with the list without putting too much effort into it, though it was starting to become a more and more daunting task. There was no way she could start to get revenge on one of them without the rest ganging up on her and doing something worse. She had to add the Hufflepuff wizards who found the first-year who had been her first test subject after figuring out they distorted her message. Her visions of revenge against Daphne had previously involved centaurs, since they were disgusting half-breeds, but she had a harder time taking delight in imagining the witch's tears.

Eventually, she found herself alone at the Leaving Feast. As far as she could tell, her clothes had stayed mostly on for the past few days, and as she listlessly poked at her food, Cho came over to her. They had not spoken in she could not remember how long, but Marietta did not look up.

"We've decided to remove your curse," the other witch said unexpectedly. "It looks like you've learned your lesson."

"Did you really think all those things about me?" she asked quietly, paying more attention to her book than either her former friend or her food. She had lost a few pounds, but she hardly noticed. "Did you think I enjoyed being punished?"

"Well... it sort of looked like you did, and I was going along with the others. Sorry. I hope we can still be friends when we come back for our last year."

"Do friends normally punish each other?"

"Do friends normally betray each other? Early on, when we were still discussing the punishment, Harry said you had no excuse because Ron's father is in the Ministry too. I wanted to be sympathetic, but it was like you didn't care at all."

Marietta did not respond. In a matter of hours she found herself on the train. She took that opportunity to put a disillusionment charm on herself and scowl. Cho's punishment just grew by a factor of ten.

"I hope we can still be friends?" she muttered to herself. "She's acting like she doesn't deserve punishment herself." She had thus far not specifically planned out the retribution for a pretended friend, only that it would be somewhat milder than the punishments for Granger and perhaps Daphne, who were knowingly against her the entire time. It was quite possible, however, that she would have to increase it to be level with the rest of them. "Yes, if I am to punish them all at once, they might as well all have the same punishment. It must be something the wizards and witches would both hate."

Her contemplation continued in silence as a witch and wizard joined in her compartment. She recognized them instantly; it was Cho and Potter. Scowling with greater determination than before, she watched as they put up charms to keep anyone else from noticing them or seeing them. Despite her displeasure at being stuck in such a circumstance, exposing herself now would reveal that she had been under a disillusionment charm the whole time, which would in turn reveal that she had not given up on her plans for revenge, which was what she wanted them to think.

"I want to do it properly," the wizard said quietly. "Let's do it without magic."

"Wait..." she managed, pointing her wand at his groin area. "Okay." They removed their clothes. Marietta's eyes were all but invisible, but if the passerby wondered, they were rolling. In truth, she was confused more than anything else, since she had not thought their relationship had reached this point, not that there was ever an appropriate time for a wizard to ruin a witch's body with his nasty second wand. They were kissing quietly with Cho on his lap, and she watched as his manhood stiffened. It was a truly disgusting sight, it even warmed her body in a weird, confusing way that she did not like at all. She suspected their choice of position was mostly an involuntary effort of practicality, but the witch was defying all possible expectations by not only consenting to be in such a position as they kissed, but to descend to her knees before him to take his manhood in her mouth.

"What is wrong with you, Cho?!" she asked, noticing no response. She quickly deduced that they had put up some sort of charm to keep sounds from bothering them. "I cannot possibly imagine anything that would taste worse!"

"Are you okay?" Potter asked, still ignoring the voice of reason. The witch nodded.

"I've never done this before..."

"Why start now?" Marietta asked loudly. She banged her head against the wall of the compartment. Her former friend continued to defy good sense by putting her soft, gentle lips around the organ, swallowing it before drawing back out. "It's not too late to do the sensible thing, Cho," she commented. "You could always use your teeth."

Lazily adjusting her sight to Potter, it seemed he was thoroughly enjoying himself, which was completely undeserved. She noticed it in the way that his tense body seemed to relax all at once. Eventually she grew frustrated.

"Oh, come off it, I know she won't enjoy it, but you can't just not put the same amount of effort into it!" the witch with the free mouth objected. She conjured a scoreboard and put Cho in the lead with no fewer than five minutes sucking. Doing the arithmancy in her head, that obligated the wizard to at least six minutes of active mouth contact on her lower body. It seemed she was using her own fingers on her sex, and it was difficult to calculate what that effort merited apart from an insult to the wizard. "I knew it. You've never done this before, have you?" she asked, tauntingly.

They ignored her and spoke softly to each other for a moment before the witch lowered herself onto his erect lower wand before lifting herself carefully up again. A trickle of blood came down and she gripped the wizard's arms for a moment.

"How dare you!" Marietta shouted, dropping the scorecard. "Now you've injured her! Take her to Saint Mungo's immediately. I knew this sort of thing was poorly advised." Contradicting her advice, they continued. Cho got up to speed and rode him like a thestral as he had a hand on her breast, and another on her rear, of all places, where wizard's hands most certainly did not belong, and he had the gall to massage her there. She wanted to scream, but as her frustration with the scene and her hastily updating scorecard mounted, her former friend beat her to it in mere moments. She took in sharp breaths, as if she were being suffocated, which was entirely likely with such a terrible, ill-advised thing going on.

"Cho, I'm about to..."

"It's... fine... the charm," she managed as she continued. They stopped abruptly and he held her still for a moment before they moved into what looked like a more comfortable hug. "That was good for our first time."

"It wasn't on that long..."

"That will give us more time to be like this."

"I love you," he said quietly. She squeezed him, smiling.

Marietta was not quite done.

"Wait, that's it? You tell her you love her- what she just did is worth at least a hundred galleons, so where is it?" she demanded. "I for one cannot fathom why witches slave away- really, Potter, she was active for at least six minutes longer than you were- I _suppose_ you might have been moving from below whilst she was on top-"

Their charm-assisted ability to ignore her was grating on her, so she shut up and stared all but invisible daggers at them the rest of the trip.


	14. Home for the Holiday

When Marietta escaped the Hogwarts Express at last, she went home posthaste. Her parents lived in the muggle bit of London, so she was allowed to perform magic if need be, but only if she could establish it as an emergency, and being naked in public did not count. Fortunately, it seemed Cho had been telling the truth about the curse being removed, if only temporarily, so she would not have to worry about that over the summer holiday.

"Ha!" she announced, coming to a conclusion. "Granger only desired that she would not get caught. She knew my parents would believe me if I told them that I was being cursed, and there would be no way of further embarrassing myself before them." She was definitely satisfied with the conclusion, though it was her own, which was usually enough. Her parents had prepared a nice dinner for her, as was tradition.

"How was school, Marietta?"

"It was splendid, once Headmistress Umbridge took over. It was a true shame she had to vacate the position, but there was nothing I could have done about it."

"Ah, well, it was a bunch of filthy half-breeds," her father said. "Some of the people at work say I should really watch my language about them, but there they go, proving us right again. I think the shame is that they never know a good deal when they see one. The goblins are nothing like that, of course."

"Of course," her mother said.

"Of course," she agreed. Their conversation was the most pleasant in which she had taken part the entire year. Eventually, she started on her summer work and sent herself up to bed after that. While she would have loved to fall asleep right away, the scene with Cho and Potter was consuming her thoughts. The witch's behavior were in direct contradiction to reality. The most confusing behavior of all, or at least the one to which the silent observer had devoted the least braincells to try untangling was putting her fingers in her own sex. It was not a treat for the wizard, no, it was impossible to even conceptualize it in such a way. Did she... enjoy it?

Purely out of an academic interest she made sure her parents were sleeping before going back into her room, tempted to cast spells to keep herself from being noticed before she remembered there were laws against such things. All of a sudden her mind changed course.

"Of course there would be laws against using magic, even if you're using concealing charms and making yourself less visible to muggles- you're also making yourself less visible to the magical. And you couldn't be doing that unless you were doing something awful." Marietta took a little pride in being able to say that everything she had done that year, if she explained it completely in order without leaving out any context, she would be able to explain to her parents. She would not, however, be able to explain inappropriately touching herself. Both of them had separately warned her about wizards touching any part of her body, because of the harm they would do to her with their gross, perverted fingers, but her sex was on an entirely different level.

She wondered if she could even distinguish the feeling of her own fingers from those of the more experienced Susan, but there it was again, academic interest betraying her. Briefly considering lobotomizing herself to avoid ever thinking of that subject again, she tried to think of something else. It was more of a challenge than expected.

Managing to make it to the following morning without indulging her desire for knowledge, she had a pleasant day of nothing but her assignments, meaning there would be plenty of time for further study once those were out of the way, though she intended to do an exemplary job on everything, meaning she would not be done with them for a few days. Doing her very best to focus on the material, she made it all the way to the evening before the subject crept back into her brain. She imagined trying to bring it up to her parents, asking them if she could study herself a little more closely.

Her father and mother would exchange looks before asking 'whatever for?' and then she would have to explain that other witches seemed to be enjoying it, and she wanted to know how exactly that was possible. One or the other would tell her that animal instincts had no bearing on how she was to behave, but it was not her fault of course, it was the school's fault for not preventing that sort of thing for taking place. If witches were allowed to touch themselves, sooner or later they would stop minding it when wizards touched them, and then sooner or later everything would be a mass... orgy. She nearly shook thinking about it.

"That's quite enough of that line of conversation," she decided. "Whenever I think about that, what I need to do is to open another book." It seemed simple enough. She was reading Ancient Runes, and some of the symbols had the audacity to appear phallic, so she switched to Arithmancy. When asked to describe the relationships between different figures, she switched to Potions, which was pretty safe for a while. It was not the first time she found herself grateful she had never taken Care of Magical Creatures; it seemed inevitable that breeding would come up, and a half-giant would hardly hide the gory details from the students. She imagined witches as young as thirteen hearing about _mating_ and _gestation_ and _sexual maturity_. It was entirely the wrong time for that sort of thing to come up.

It was really quite disgusting, she decided, perhaps the very worst aspect of the school, that a wizard would be allowed to teach witches about that sort of thing. She had ever been in any of the classes herself, but really there was no way he would put things delicately. If anything, he would only make them easier prey for the other wizards. It had been a great fear of hers through her girlhood that older wizards would abuse their positions of power to help younger wizards. Perhaps, after all, that really was what the mysterious fist bump represented.

When at last the lights turned off again and she found herself in bed, she noticed her hand was right over her sex, which seemed to warm. She quickly moved her hand away, deciding it must be a warning. Having made some progress studying, she was satisfied with the day, though she knew she needed some more productive way of directing her feelings. At length she decided that whenever she felt like giving into her purely academic curiosity, she would instead imagine what she would do to her enemies. After the end of the last school year, she needed to rekindle her desire for revenge if she were to have any chance of settling the score.

Lying in bed, she imagined Cho's punishment first. Ordinarily, getting a wizard to have sex with her would cause a witch to feel nauseated by his grossness, to the point where she could never feel clean again, but apparently her former friend was immune. It was entirely possible she was badly brought up, or it was that dreadful Cedric corrupting her before mysteriously disappearing at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. Back when the two of them were eleven, she had seemed quite innocent, though, so it was more likely the latter.

An ironic punishment seemed appropriate, so she imagined the witch getting stripped naked in the middle of a Quidditch game. Cho would not realize it at first, flying around to catch the elusive Snitch, but one by one the other players would notice, and everyone in the stands would just stare at her silently. The witches would look away, of course, but the wizards would be transfixed, their eyes moving from her breasts to her arse and back again. Would she try to cover them? Fly away? She would have to realize once the other players stopped to stare at her. Perhaps friends would warn her, but the wizards would betray her, staring rather than helping.

It would be around then that she could never go back to being happy. She would quit the team whether or not she were compelled, and then she could never show her face in class. It would be best if everyone thought she had done it all herself, as a method of getting attention, which no witch ever actually wanted, but there would be no way of proving the actual culprit responsible. The simplest way of pulling it off would be to imperius someone into learning the clothes-removing charm that Daphne used, and then get him or her to use it on Cho during the game. It would be quite the lesson for her, and Marietta hoped it would be enough for her to see the error of her ways, but the other punishments after that would help, if necessary.

Susan would be easy to punish. Intellectually, she knew why the witch preferred her own sort, but it still made her deeply uncomfortable. At length she had decided that Susan had just surprised her, and that she still never under any circumstances wanted to be touched like that by a wizard- especially not after what she had seen on the train. It was all she could do not to conjure the scoreboard again to see if there had been any errors in her calculations, but it most certainly did not come up even in terms of effort.

The best part about punishing Susan was that she could punish Creevey at the same time, in the same way. One would have to be under the curse before the other, but the end result would be the same. Punishing the ghost would be more challenging, but as long as she had the reverse of the temporary incorporeality charm, she would be able to devise something suitable. Having him stick his manhood into a werewolf's mouth seemed appropriate, but challenging. What she needed was a more predictable creature, like a wizard. She could get one of her other enemies to treat him the same way he had treated her, though she would not wait for him to show up naked in one of his usual haunts- she would have to test the Imperius on ghosts.

The thought of being so close to having her revenge made her smile, but imagining putting her enemies into such scenarios only made her academic desire well up more. She could just see the faces of Susan and Creevey as they realized who was embedded into whom. Her body was producing the warm liquid again; it was running onto her leg. Having grown used to not wearing underwear and having fixed the sanitary concerns with charms, she was not wearing any at the present, and she lightly touched the liquid on her leg. It had an unusual smell to it to say the least, but it came from her own body and her own body was not gross, nor did it provoke such defensive mechanisms.

Making sure her door was locked, she resolved to carefully examine herself without doing any harm. Her mother warned that touching herself would change her- that it would weaken her resolve to stay away from wizards. She rolled her eyes.

"Mother does not understand. I know to stay away from them." Carefully poking herself, the discomfort she remembered from Susan touching the same place was not there- proving, of course, that there was nothing unpleasant about the touch of a witch, it was that one in particular who was a problem. It might have had something to do with being a Defense Association loyalist.

Touching herself more, though still gently, she found the tension in her body begin to ease, but she straightened up again. She had to stay on guard. The slightest concession to ease or worse, to animal instinct would send her spiraling into the great orgy at the dawn of humankind. It was almost exactly like experimenting with dark magic. She knew very well why such things were banned, though not for those clever enough not to get caught. It formed a sort of natural barrier that kept out the likes of Potter and Granger and Weasley and allowed her to pass right on through- she was more than intelligent enough to be responsible in the face of such... temptation.

Her mind was adrift in pleasure. Her hands were sopping wet, of course, but she wanted nothing more than for the sensation to continue, devil may care about getting the strange liquid on her bed. Fingers pressing harder all along her sensitive walls, she found a little node of nerves that was a particular delight. Throwing her head back and lifting her hips off the surface of the bed, she felt her orgasm wash over her. Pleasant jolts made their way to her fingers and toes, with none of the discomfort of Susan touching her.

Lying in bed and simply feeling the aftershocks, she particularly enjoyed the fact that there were no wizards around, and that she could easily satiate her academic curiosity without their help. She wanted to shout to the whole world that she had no need of them. It was the witch's way of doing such things, and they were not allowed at all, not even to watch. Apart from their unfortunate necessity in the process of having children, she was truly lost as to why anyone associated with them any longer.

She remembered once asking her parents if they intended to have any more children, since they were still together. If she remembered correctly, her father replied that her mother was being very generous to allow him to stay around, and he did enjoy raising her, for what little that counted. Her mother said that he was a very hard worker and ultimately it worked out better for the both of them for him to remain. As far as she was concerned, it was not a good enough reason, but he had always been pleasant and most importantly he agreed with her mother on everything, especially the changes she recommended to Hogwarts uniforms.

It was doubtful that they had touched each other in years, which she could guess was how both of them ultimately preferred it. Her father would be anxious about taking advantage of her mother, and her mother would be annoyed and not enjoy it. She had a few times stated that intercourse had no redeeming qualities at all, and she would have said otherwise if her husband were at all capable. Of course, it was quite possible and at least consistent with everything else if married witches never enjoyed their husbands' company, but they hardly had a choice but to put up with it if they wanted a father around for their children.

The following night she decided to do it another time, though to learn even more she would have to be naked. Having had another productive day of studying, she was quite ready for bed and yet the feeling would neither leave her mind nor her body. Removing all of her clothes after making sure her door was locked again, she covered nude form with sheets as she ran through all the revenge fantasies about her enemies, specifically the gross ones. She wanted to make the youngest Weasleys have sex with each other, and she hoped that they were related would constitute enough of a punishment for the wizard.

Running her fingertips over her bare breasts, she imagined him caressing a restrained sister, whispering things that only the two of them knew in her ear, the better to verify his identity. Under the Imperius, he would ignore the little sounds of protest she would make as he started to massage her body, first gently, then firmly. Subjected to such treatment Marietta expected she would last hours, perhaps even indefinitely, but a failure of a witch like the redhead would find her body betraying her almost immediately. She would ooze with the warm, sticky liquid as her brother planted his churlish lips on her mouth, and whether she desired her desire or not, it would overtake her. The curse would compel him to continue to warm her and to aggravate her sensitive areas until she begged for it- and beg she would, for the ultimate defilement of his manhood, no, his cock, his filthy wizard's cock ramming inside of her.

Marietta found her body was reacting to the mental image and her hand was already down there, tracing the now-familiar path to the sensations of yesterday. She could just imagine her absolute victory over the other witch as she suffered an eternity of increasing corruption, of reliance on nasty wizards to feel the way her tormentor already felt. She squeezed her legs shut on her hands so hard she almost thought the bones in her hand would break.

"My wand..." she whispered, remembering she could not cast spells. Lying on her side, she inserted it carefully into her sex, warming it and guiding it over her sensitive spots, reaching deeper than she could have with her hand. It was a sublime experience, taking it in and out and in and out, gently as she could manage to contain her excitement. What drove her over the edge once more was imagining the look of defeat on her enemy's face, thinking how it would almost make up for how she and her nasty little friends had seen her naked as she came to humble herself and beg for her curse to be removed.

If Marietta knew one thing, though, the curse with which she would leave her enemies was one no power could ever remove, so it was better they did not ask. Of course, she would enjoy seeing them try. It would be worth the effort to come up with a new, much harsher punishment.


	15. The Beginning of Retribution

Marietta went back to school ready for her final year and for revenge. Bringing with her an arsenal of charms, curses, and unsurpassed knowledge, with a few moments of practice she would be quite unstoppable. She could hardly keep from grinning with glee over what would happen to everyone who had wronged her.

All the while, she had not forgotten the need for stealth. If the enemy figured out her designs too soon, they would all turn on her and it would be over. She suspected she could hide indefinitely if she turned herself incorporeal and disillusioned herself perfectly, but hiding indefinitely was not the goal. She still wanted a Ministry career after her efforts came to fruition, and she had every intention of getting one. For this, she needed a backup plan to kidnap Potter if worst came to worst.

Kidnapping him would allow her to keep his annoying little friends from taking revenge on her, because apparently he was important, as all the _Daily Prophet_ articles kept saying over and over. Marietta had mostly skipped over the footnotes about how his godfather had turned out to be innocent of the crimes for which he had been imprisoned, since that was hardly important. He was dead, and if he had died in prison, there would have been no difference.

When she boarded the train, she made a point to sit next to Cho, acting like nothing at all was going on. The wizard had declined to join them for some reason, but that made it easier for her to pretend. They talked about inane subjects like classes and N.E. for the duration of the train ride, and went to school as normal. She had the misfortune of being stuck on a carriage with Justin Finch-Fletchley and his girlfriend, which reminded her she needed to take revenge on him as well. Fortunately, he was already on the list, but she threw his girlfriend on there for good measure. While the passing observer would say they were only kissing chastely, she could tell the intent was to annoy her.

At Hogwarts the feast kicked off and she wasted no time using the Imperius Curse on Luna Lovegood, who was across from her. It was easy enough to take advantage of the confusion, and the best part was, if anyone caught her, no one would care, since everyone believed Lovegood was mad. As soon as the feast was over, she followed the witch out, manipulating her to bat her eyelashes at Justin. Making him cheat on his girlfriend was hardly a punishment for him, since, being a wizard, he would feel no guilt over it, but there was more to come.

As she expected, Finch-Fletchley came when called, but he seemed to think the witch just wanted something from him. It would not do.

"Are you happy, Justin?" Lovegood asked. "Do you know how my family got its name?" Marietta gleamed with pride as she followed them down the mostly empty corridor. Her control was even better than she had imagined. Before long, she would have him dancing on her palm.

"I think I know what you're talking about- for once. I'm not interested. I like Fay Dunbar, we get along. I'd rather no one else complicate things." As he started to walk off, she hit him with another curse, forcing him to forget he was in a relationship. He was undeterred.

"That bastard," she muttered almost silently. Getting him to turn around by sending a spell past him, he looked to see the witch had opened her shirt for him in the middle of the corridor. Almost immediately, his mind was made up. "Oh, so all it took was for you to forget you had a girlfriend, and now you're betraying her?" She rolled her eyes. Wizards were the ultimate height of predictability.

Unfortunately for her plans, Lovegood was lacking in the department of assets, but that could change if needed. Fortunately, Finch-Fletchley was following her to a broom closet anyway. Marietta was beginning to think the closets existed for no other purpose. Going after them, she could almost pass through the door, but had not had any practice with temporary incorporeality over the summer holiday, and contented herself with passing under it. They were kissing quite passionately, and though the wizard seemed a little confused, he was hardly unwilling. It entered her mind that perhaps he was waiting for someone to come out and say it was all a joke.

Deciding she had seen enough, she proceeded out of the closet to practice the incorporeality charm elsewhere. It was not an immediate need, but had the potential to be a real snag in her plans, up to and including last-minute escape plans. Her memory of the unfortunate incident with Sir Nicholas detailed that his manhood did not feel entirely real, though at the time she assumed it was just softer than expected. In reality, the most likely explanation was that as much as she failed to turn herself incorporeal, she had failed to interact with the completely spectral.

"Not only do I need to master this as an eventuality, I need to master it if I have any hope of effective revenge against that ghost. Just because I told him I wanted his cock down my throat and I showed up naked in the library does not mean I wanted to do any of that!" She fumed as she practiced into the night.

The following morning, she had classes as always, though first day classes always went by quickly. She had removed the curses from Lovegood and Finch-Fletchley at some point in the night, so she expected them to be in a row, but thus far she had seen nothing to that effect. Keeping a low profile, she continued to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary, more like she did before she mistakenly involved herself with the Defense Association. It was not that difficult of an act to master, since at the time it had been an act as well.

After her classes were over, she was happy to not have detention, since that gave her more time for revenge. Finding the Weasley girl, she used the Imperius to lead her off to a lonely corridor to divulge her secrets. Apparently she carried a torch for Potter, and she had for years, though Marietta only shook her head at that notion, reminding herself that her mother generally saw love among witches as a lapse in judgement, and she would only see this one as a particularly substantial lapse. For some reason, Rita Skeeter had had nothing to saw on Potter recently, but it was not as if everything before that had been false. _The Daily Prophet,_ after all, was heavily vetted and all articles were passed by some department in the Ministry before publication.

Marietta used the curse again to get the witch, making her forget that she was related to her brother. She supposed that a memory charm would do just as well, but she had not researched memory charms, and the Imperius worked well enough. Magic seemed to have a way of understanding what she wanted. At any rate, all she really needed to do was to get her brother off in another broom closet. Thus far, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with repeating the same process as before, especially since she could make the wizards visit each other after that.

Essential to her plan was that her victims would remember everything they had done afterword, meaning the witches would feel disgusted and the wizards would have extra perverted glee, but that was something that could be counteracted. To punish Weasley and Finch-Fletchley, she would have them perform all the same tricks on each other. Seeing the two redheads leave the Great Hall together, she sneaked after them, disillusioned with an illusory copy of herself sitting there reading. Thus far she had always managed to have an alibi, though if she were gone for too long, it would look suspicious anyway, especially if someone tried to talk to her.

"What is it, Ginny?" the wizard asked, looking a little frustrated. Marietta reasoned the explanation must have been curt, and she would do better next time to give her victims the answers to questions she could reasonably predict.

"I just need you to come with me for a moment. We need to discuss something in private." She used the charm on the wizard, making the need for further deception irrelevant. They both went into the nearest broom closet as ordered, though she needed to ensure that they found each other suitably attractive, once the complication of being related was removed. As she passed through the door, it seemed nothing in particular was happening, so she cursed the wizard again to get him to arouse the witch in some way and cursed the witch to do the same. Satisfied as she left them kissing and groping at each other, she made her way back to the Great Hall, where she once more resumed the position of her illusory double and faded the charm.

Closing the book her shadow clone had been reading, she got up and left the hall, resolving to practice spells she could not have practiced while on holiday. There were potions that might be useful for her purposes, but as long as a spell did basically the same thing, she saw no point in it. Potions were by nature temporary, so they would be suitable for her revenge in some aspects, but she preferred to control the effective time of revenge. Removing the curses from the Weasleys at some point in the night, she decided that she was grateful, not for the first time, that she had done her reading. According to the books on dark magic, the Imperius created a link between the caster and victim, meaning that link could be severed from either end.

Satisfied that there was no way she could be caught, she went to sleep and dreamed pleasant dreams, mostly about terrible things that happened to her enemies. She thought she saw Neville Longbottom have his wand shoved up his rectum while petrified naked in public, so she resolved to remember it. Deciding against writing it down the following morning, she thought more on Cho's punishment as she went to breakfast.

If to anyone's surprise, it was not to hers as she saw Finch-Fletchley casting sidelong glances at Lovegood, who had apparently not eaten. Granger was looking worried about her, but Marietta could not tell if she discussed the emotional state of an acquainted witch with Potter and Weasley, the latter of whom was handing his head, to her moderate surprise. As she predicted, however, her victims would suffer in silence, at least at first. The lion's share of the punishment was shame after all; it did no good to tell anyone.

"All the same, I think I should set up a target for their investigation." Looking around, she spotted Draco Malfoy. Sneaking after him while leaving an illusory clone behind, she cursed him in the back and made him smirk knowingly at each of her victims so far whenever he had the opportunity. The look could be misinterpreted, of course, but she could afford the risk. At any rate, she would have to make sure to keep updating his orders whenever she exacted vengeance on other targets, but she doubted she would have to cast the spell multiple times.

She settled on Colin and Susan as her next targets, deciding she could put Cho off until later as the two of them went over some N.E.W.T level material. It helped to have a study partner, and she supposed that the witch acting like they could be friends again constituted mitigating circumstances. The other students had of course made no such attempts at being forgiven, and consequently there would be no such mercy. Marietta was quite capable of putting aside her petty revenge, but she had her limits, of course. She supposed if anyone else tried to get back into her good graces she could transfer part of their punishment to Granger, who only seemed more and more guilty as she had yet to even acknowledge her leading hand in the calamity.

Shaking her head a little, she would have to go back to the drawing board for that one.


	16. Retribution Continued

Kidnapping Potter proved difficult. His friends never left his side, it seemed, unless he ventured out on his own. She had delayed her plans for revenge to see if there were any suspicion of her, and thus far there had not been. Fortunately, however, it seemed her next victim went off on his own to follow Draco Malfoy, whom he believed to be a Death Eater. The idea made Marietta roll her eyes, but it provided her with an opportunity nonetheless. She forged a letter from him to Pansy Parkinson, leaving it on his desk in Potions, and Potter just happened to see it after the wizard he seemed to hate so much left.

The trick required her to skip one of her own classes, but with her illusory double taking her place, it was not as if she would be found out. Following Potter out to the place where his mortal enemy was supposedly about to confess to being a Death Eater to his girlfriend, she reasoned that he had an invisibility cloak, which complicated things. She could not simply start casting stunning charms at every hint of movement, so she waited for him to give up waiting and go back. Based on the most likely path he would take to go around corners quickly, she could stand in it and hit him without fail.

"There you are," she said as he fell over, his cloak falling off him. A broom closet would be the obvious choice in terms of hiding places, and he would probably be found pretty quickly. She settled on leaving him in the Room of Requirement, reasoning that it would be impossible for anyone else to find him there. On her way back, she found Susan and Creevey, already under the Imperius.

"What is your wish?" the wizard asked.

"The two of you may not love each other, but I wish for you two each to try to please the other. Don't stop trying until you succeed." Deciding that she was effectively kidnapping them, she changed course. "Do it here in this corridor," she finalized.

Leaving them, she smirked to herself about her mortal enemy's chances of getting out of his prison. She expected he would eventually come round from the stunner, but when he woke he would be in a cage, with his wand a few feet away from him. Even if he managed to escape that, he would still be in the room, and she expected that it would be just as hard getting out when not in the proper frame of mind as it would be to get in. Without any further delays, she went back to Ravenclaw Tower.

As expected, it was quite the commotion the following morning as Creevey and Susan were both reported to have tried to return to their respective common rooms, probably around the time she removed the Imperius, without the benefit of their clothes. If the case could be said to be eerily similar to other cases, it seemed no one was making the connection. That was, of course, no cause for concern or particular surprise, since no one was quite as clever as she was. There was a clone of Potter moving about, though she expected there was only so long that trick could last unassisted. She ended up using the curse on an easily forgotten seventh-year, telling him he was Harry Potter, and that he had better stick to the script. If tying the illusion to him failed, then it failed; she was indifferent.

Going through classes, she decided Granger was her next target, though whenever Marietta stole a glance in her direction it seemed she was unsuccessfully trying to talk Potter's and Weasley's ears off, though that was to be expected. Neither of them were giving her particularly interesting responses.

She wanted to laugh, of course, but that could come later, when she was alone. Casting the curse on Cho, she decided to make her former friend play with herself in public, but make some effort not to get caught, which seemed an appropriate challenge. Not wanting to forget Daphne Greengrass, she walked disillusioned over to the Slytherin table, where she noticed Malfoy looked like he was in hot water indeed. It seemed a substantial portion of the students, including those from other tables, were glaring daggers at him.

Cursing the witch, she bid her go outside. It seemed like a wasted effort to try to use her to get Granger, who would be suspicious of anything at this point. Getting her as she skirted off by herself to the toilet, she commanded the witch to go outside. There was a look like she was fighting it for a moment, and at that point she remembered the Death Eater had exposed at least a few of the students to the Imperius two years earlier, and some of them likely cared more than others about being able to fight it.

"Silly girl, I know far more about how this curse works than you. Come with me."

Leading her mortal enemy out to the grounds with Daphne, she walked the pair of them into the Forbidden Forest. Surprised that centaurs had not already leapt out to assault them, ideally in a sexual manner, she marched the mind-controlled witches around a bit before they found some and used the Imperius on them. As they were creatures of near-human intelligence, it worked about as well as expected. The centaurs approached their perfectly helpless victims and their equine cocks protruded. She ordered both of her captives to remove their clothes and present their arses. Perhaps it was a less sacred place to violate, but there was the chance of turning their organs inside out. It seemed the filthy beasts were having some trouble getting their members in the hole, so she cast a few hastily researched charms to aid their descent down the tight caverns as tears rolled down the faces of the witches.

Marietta felt like laughing as they pounded away, the one railing Daphne picking her up with his arms, the other lowering himself onto his horse-haunches to more effectively plunder the prone Granger. The most disturbing part was easily the sound that was produced with every forceful thrust. If the centaurs had any intention to make the witches enjoy what was happening to them, they were perfectly unsuccessful.

Deciding it was better to go back, she found herself the target of a stunning spell. Sidestepping Weasley's obvious maneuver, she was tempted to laugh as she disillusioned herself, but all at once her hands clapped against her side and she went stiff as a board. Realizing too late she had heard a muffled incantation of the full-body bind, she found herself kicked in the face before two pairs of feet went past her to deal with the centaurs.

"What do we need to do to get 'em out of there?"

"Don't hurt the centaurs," a voice she recognized pleaded. "We just need to break her concentration."

"Oh, I reckon I can do that." She felt the rear of her skirt being lifted and a wand, most likely her own, jammed into her arse. Marietta wanted to scream, but no sound came out. All she heard was some rustling behind her and the sound of centaurs running off. "You alright, Hermione?"

"No..." a weak voice started. "I probably need to go... to the Hospital Wing... and then wherever people go when they want to die, but can't."

"That's still the Hospital Wing. Who are you?"

She would have rolled her eyes if she had any control over them. Was it possible to be any more callous? How exactly did a sixteen year old wizard not know exactly how to comfort a victim of a violent rape? Daphne Greengrass lied as she identified herself, but that ruse would be up soon.

"What are we going to do with her, Ron?" a wizard's voice asked. Marietta knew who 'her' was.

"Haven't even started with her yet. Leave her out here for now; don't think anyone's really going to care enough to come look."

The wizards escorted the two witches around her disillusioned body, and she could swear one of them was Neville Longbottom. She could curse herself for not going after him first, but without Weasley's help of being a distraction, he would have been unable to defeat her, so it was really a failure of effectively dealing with him before moving on to other targets for her revenge. Had she trapped him somewhere like she had Potter, or traumatized him more severely, he would have been quite incapable of going after her.

Fortunately, it seemed they really were intent on leaving her under the body binding charm, which might wear off eventually, but it was better not to take the chance. Her only hope was using her wand on herself... while it was embedded in her arse. Her embarrassment was deep enough to hide a submarine, but she clenched her anus around the firm wooden handle, hoping to at least get what could be called a good grip on it. In an alternate reality where such disgusting things were normal, she could imagine herself writing a report to Professor Flitwick about this experiment.

Concentrating, she eventually canceled the charm that kept her in place and almost immediately pulled her wand out, which probably felt worse than it would have had she gone slowly, in retrospect. Marietta knew she could begin to make pointless conjecture about how her plans had been found out, but there was no point to that. What she needed to do now was get inside and hide. She knew there was still an illusory copy of herself wandering around, and if her pursuers found it, they would know her trick, so she canceled the charm.

Reaching the castle, she disappeared off to her classes. With a little luck, they would think she was still out on the grounds, but luck had not been on her side so far. Creating one clone of herself in class and one clone at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, she expected that anyone who looked out a window would see it and assume she was still trapped, though no one would look out the window for no reason.

When she eventually ate lunch, disillusioned and in the company of no illusions of herself, she decided she needed a plan, but she also needed to continue her revenge. In the event she just needed to escape, she still had Potter up her sleeve, but she wanted everything else to be out of the way first. The problem was Longbottom. Constantly in the company of more talented friends, she would have a hard time getting him on his own. He was her last real target for revenge, but she was having a hard time thinking up anything specific to use. Eventually she concluded that it would have to be something similar to what she had done before.

At the end of lunch, however, their Headmaster had a surprise announcement that Harry Potter had gone missing, and students with any information as to his whereabouts would be rewarded. She doubted her plan to get everyone to focus on Malfoy would work, since she had already been seen, but it was only two students who would remember seeing her. Even Granger and Greengrass, whose Imperius curses had been canceled, only passed by her whilst she was disillusioned. Her plan would, in any case, have to wait for classes to be out.

Creeping up to the boys' dormitory in Gryffindor Tower by sneaking through the portrait hole as a younger student opened it, she decided there was nothing to fear about everyone looking for Potter. She had only created the illusory copy of him as a short-term measure, and really had no expectation that anyone would fall for it for any length of time, but she had not expected Longbottom and Weasley to unravel the mystery whilst she was in the middle of punishing the withces.

"Ah, well, that can't be helped at this point. Because of the good sense of Godric Gryffindor, they won't be expecting me."


	17. Traps on Top of Traps

Lying in wait for her final victims, she already knew what curses she would use. An Imperius would get one wizard to move in front of the other, and if necessary, she could stun the other or have him meet the same fate, which he would anyway. It was a little-known fact that the stairs leading up to the girls' dormitory would not cooperate with wizards, but the stairs leading to the boys' dormitory would allow her to pass. She could only guess that Godric Gryffindor had been a wizard rather like her father, with a firm hand to lead him, but it did not matter.

"Hey, Dean!" a voice called as some heavy footfalls could be heard going up the stairs. "You got the latest _Prophet_ up there?"

"Yeah, you can look when I'm done reading it." It was not entirely a disaster; they were just going to be reading the newspaper until the others came in. It meant she had to wait until Weasley and Longbottom were asleep, but that would only take a few hours. If they were wise, they would be telling anyone who would listen that she had been cursing them and all their friends, but they were wizards and they had no evidence without her wand.

Watching as the two wizards sat down on a bed, she was confident they had no notion of her position, though any spell she could cast excepting the Imperius, to her knowledge, would give that away. Deciding it was better to have them on her side in the unlikely event that her two targets came back in and told them she could be trying to ambush them, she crept over with her wand out.

" _Imperio_ -" she whispered, knocked backward in the same breath by, of all things, an explosion. She caught herself feeling her face to see if she had been singed at all before grabbing her wand again. "What the-"

" _Expelliarmus._ Yeah, looks like we learned something, Dean. She didn't get you or anything, did she?"

"It felt like the curse connected for a second, but you were right quick about breaking her concentration." He looked over to Marietta. "Forgot about us, didn't you?"

"Can't blame you, I guess. I wasn't in that first meeting. You really didn't notice Dean, though?" She scowled rather than answering. "Doesn't matter. It really doesn't. We know no one really pays attention to us next to Potter and Weasley- hell, even Longbottom these days." He grabbed her arm and dragged her away from where her wand was lying.

"I wouldn't recommend going anywhere without that," the other wizard said. "It's got all the evidence we need for a- what was it- 'a one-way ticket to Azkaban'?"

"You'll give that back if you know what's good for you," she muttered. "You still haven't found Potter, have you?"

"Well, no, that's not how this works. You're going to tell us exactly where you've hidden him." He looked over at Dean. "I don't think we have to play nice with this one."

"I don't think so at all, Seamus," he agreed, grabbing her arms. She struggled, of course, but she was not going anywhere. "I think we should make up a new rule for her to follow. All witches must open their legs."

"You don't get to make the rules," she objected, still struggling. As little as she enjoyed the idea, crying out would probably just bring more of the same to her vicinity. Seamus struck her across the face.

"No? Perhaps we should have an election. Who thinks I should get to make the rules? I do."

"You've got my vote," Dean said, holding her arms behind her in the crook of his elbows. The task hardly took all of his strength or concentration, leaving his hands free to paw at her sensitive breasts.

"That's... that's not enough votes..." she managed, struggling to keep her legs closed.

"It's a small system, but if you're in the boys' dormitory, them's the rules," Seamus explained. "Now I know you wouldn't object if I enforce them."

"I think the majority is in favor of swift, summary punishment," Dean said. Marietta was struck across the face again, her vision blinking. Somehow it made things worse that they were not using magic. Perhaps, though, the message had not been received, since she was struck again.

"Where's Harry?"

"I'm not telling you."

"That's not how this works. We just made another law that you have to tell us everything that we want to know. Now you're in violation of two laws."

"You can't make a new government... inside another government..." she managed, finally thinking of something.

"Yes, you can," Dean argued. "That's the whole Ministry of Magic. It's independent of the muggle government. I grew up under the muggle government, you know. They really do think they control the whole island and a bit of Ireland. We never told them about our government."

"I'm pretty sure the only reason they don't have the rest of our fair emerald isle is because we drove them out," Seamus added, pulling off her skirts as she struggled. "You're welcome to drive us off any time you please."

"No..." she moaned, struggling as he tried to pry her legs apart.

"No, see, you have a choice. Either you can open your legs, or I can open them for you. I wouldn't have to do the latter if you'd just-" he pulled her knees apart, putting himself between him. Marietta needed no announcement of 'The End', no formal delimiter for where the next story was to be anticipated, but it seemed better to put up a token resistance as the wizard had his trousers around his knees. The one thing she absolutely could not do was reveal Potter's location. He did not so much as pause to touch her sex before driving his own in, finding it already soaking wet as her face went impossibly red.

Dean was taunting her, and it was all she could do to listen as the hard member plunged into her body, heating up as if to engrave the invitation. Her shirt was open and her breasts were exposed as they were fondled, their peaks hardening as the pleasure started to mount from below. She ignored whatever they were saying, whatever they were asking as the punishment continued, her sensitive walls being forcefully massaged. Marietta might have broken her teeth if she forced her jaw to remain shut any harder, but the orgasm washed over her all the same, and her sharp breathing was enough for her tormentors to be able to tell, even as she shook her head mendaciously.

It was the other wizard's turn as he turned her around and mounted her on his already hard cock like an angel on a Christmas tree. He drove into her powerfully as Seamus smacked her arse over and over. It was like being caught between two thunderclouds, but there was no sign of light breaking between them. Bouncing up and down on the stiff member, her body betrayed her again by contracting hard around it as she felt another orgasm welling up, even as she fought it. The pounding continued right on through her release, perfectly apathetic to it. Eventually the cock came out and covered her with seed before its owner got out from under her, letting her fall onto the bed, arms and legs spread wide. She expected him to put it up to her mouth, but at least that would keep her from answering questions.

What surprised her was the prickling feeling from behind. She turned around with a look of shock to see Seamus dismiss the very same with a wave.

"Oh, come off it. You know what you did to Hermione. Now you can tell us what you did with Harry, or you can get a fraction of that back."

"I... I-" she stammered, trying to think of something. Without her wand, though, nothing came. The cock forcing its way in without warning felt like a spear, or at least like one should feel. It was painful, even though she knew her juices still coated his member, but he plowed on all the same as she threatened to bite off her tongue to contain her screaming. Another member was poking at her lips but she turned her head away.

In response, her head was lifted from the bed by a yank on a fistful of hair, which caused her mouth to open before it was planted back down on a hardening cock. She tried to bite it, but there was a hand holding her jaw open. Her arse was raw by the time a flopping, spent member was eventually drawn out, and she was frozen in place by some charm whose incantation she did not quite hear.

"What do we do now?"

"Well, we couldn't get Potter's location out of her like that, so I guess the only thig to do is escalate."

"How? We both fucked her. You fucked her up the-"

"I guess we could get some kind of creature to do it, like a troll."

"I don't like our odds. I don't think it'd be that fun to watch, either."

"Eh, you're right, probably not." He seemed to think for a moment. "We could get Susan to give it a shot."

"She said she already did something. It probably wasn't much, but-" The cogs in Marietta's mind came to a halt. She knew that the witch had more wizard friends than witch friends, so it was possible she had just brought it up, but it almost sounded like they were in on it. "Where's her wand, anyway?"

"I don't know; I just knocked it out of her hand. _Accio wand._ " With a light whistle her wand flew to the wizard's hand, but she surprised Dean, getting an arm out and grabbing onto it herself. Casting the temporary incorporeality charm, she was focused more on escape than retaliation, even as her list grew ever longer. Sinking through the floor, she disillusioned herself before coming to a stop in the Gryffindor common room, where it appeared no one had been looking up.

As she might have expected, the castle was still on high alert after the disappearance of Potter, but it seemed they were no closer to finding him. She gave herself an intangible pat on her spectral back. No one was quite clever enough, and that was about the end of it. It was fortunate that her wand turned incorporeal along with her, since she still needed it, but it was a curiosity to figure out later, along with how she managed to walk around. The spell did not make her exactly float, but she doubted she would get hurt if she jumped out of the tower.

Reminding herself she had yet to punish Sir Nicholas for his actions, she changed her approach for the moment. Her revenge on other students would have to wait, now that they were expecting her. She could not say for sure whether or not harmful spells would do anything to her whilst incorporeal, but it would not do to find out. Searching the library, where she had seen him last, she did not see him again.

"Does he not usually wander around here?" she asked aloud, not caring if anyone heard a disembodied voice. She looked all over the castle, from the Entrance Hall to the Courtyard, and eventually she caught sight of a ghost near the kitchen, but that was the Fat Friar. She checked a rarely used room called the Trophy Room, where he seemed to be waiting for her.

"Ah, Marietta. It has been a while."

" _Illusio!_ " He turned corporeal immediately, touching himself reflexively.

"I must say, it is a bit of a shock to be so transfigured..." he managed, seeming genuinely surprised.

"Not as much of a shock as this. _Petrificus Totalus. Silencio._ " Immediately he went stiff as a board and fell forward, though his mostly detached head lolled so that he was looking at her. " _Wingardrium Leviosa._ " Her charm lifted a particularly phallic trophy from one of the shelves. Briefly caving to her curiosity and reading the description, it was for an achievement in Care of Magical Creatures, which made her eyes roll.

At least she meant to enjoy this.


	18. Surrounded

She divested the specter of his trousers before plunging the burnished instrument into his arse. It appeared quite painful, but that was no reason to stop, much less to make the process more comfortable. Controlling the levitation charm with the continued movement of her wand, she continued to ram the trophy deep into the ghost's rectum, imagining the sounds he would be making had she not silenced him. Enjoying herself as much as she expected, she decided it was a suitable punishment and just let the charm continue for her. Turning to go through the door again, she reminded herself she did not need to open it.

On the other side, however, there were over a dozen ghosts. Almost as soon as they were upon her, she made herself corporeal, and they passed through, though the chill was enough to rattle her bones. All at once, the world went dark.

She knew she had lost consciousness, but somehow she was thinking again. Marietta could not say how long it had been since what she presumed to be a blind stunner hit her outside the Trophy Room. It could have been that the ghosts had set a trap for her, but it seemed more likely that they agreed to help the living. Some sense of awareness passed through her being that she had been moved, and now she was just outside the Room of Requirement. Desperately, she felt the need to go into it, as though something terrible would happen if she remained. Without access to her waking mind, she went into the room on instinct, the door opening to the first request on her mind.

Potter was on the floor in front of her as she regained consciousness, entirely naked and not disillusioned. Somehow he had worked his way out of the cage, though the room itself had proven more of a challenge. He looked past her and she turned around to see Granger, Weasley, and of all people, Cho. Her words found themselves caught in her throat.

"D-did you stun me?" she managed.

"Yes. Did you put a curse on me causing me to play with myself in public?"

"That was because-"

"Shut up!" Weasley shouted, making his way over to her. "Shut up, nothing you've done has been justified in the slightest. You almost entirely got off when the rest of us could've been going to Azkaban-"

"We've been through this," Granger said, interrupting. "We've been through it, and you're right, but there's no point. She just can't ever conceptualize that she was in the wrong."

"Is that what you've been doing this whole time?" Marietta asked, turning at the sound of her voice. She was the only one without a wand, or clothes for that matter.

"That's what we've been doing up until recently," Cho clarified. "I really did want to give you another chance, even after you showed no remorse at all the last time you begged for me to remove the curse."

"You've been communicating-"

"Yes, we've been using the Protean charm. Every so often, one of us would see you and use the disrobing charm-"

"Wait, you've been using that charm on me the whole time?" She remembered Daphne using something like that to remove her own clothes. "I was never cursed?"

"The hardest curse to remove is one that isn't there," Cho said. "You never noticed that whenever you lost an article of clothing, one of us was somewhere nearby?"

Marietta declined to answer. The knowledge that she could have just put up the occasional shield charm whenever one of her mortal enemies happened to be near enough to cast a spell on her felt like it was unraveling something in her brain. Granger seemed to be waving her wand over the fake galleon, which she knew meant she was calling the troops, but naked, surrounded, and without her wand, there was nothing she could do about that. Lovegood was the first to appear.

"Oh, there you are," she said as if she had not been expecting her. "I haven't been able to face Justin. He's tried to apologize to me. He's tried to apologize to his girlfriend-"

"You knew the whole time!" she shrieked, suddenly putting part of it together. "You knew that I didn't like being humiliated like that, but you did it anyway!"

"You didn't learn your lesson," Potter said. "You just made everything about yourself and didn't acknowledge what you did. We were considering giving it up before that, because no one wanted to see you, but you were just so annoying we decided to keep it going until you apologized."

"You never did, though," Granger explained as someone else came in. Marietta did not want to look to see who it was. "Instead, as I predicted, you went about trying to remove your curse without telling us. You asked Cho's teammate, Roger Davies- did you seriously think he was a stranger to us?" She shook her head. "-to falsify proof of your having been punished, and the whole time he was able to manipulate you like some kind of marionette through your hatred of wizards."

"That's just what you did back then, though." It was Weasley's voice. "Ever since then, you've been a real bitch times a dozen. You've really done it now."

"What about Daphne Greengrass? Was she in on this too?"

"That was Anthony," someone explained from behind her. She turned around to see Susan. "He wanted to do his part to help punish you, but he didn't want to get his hands dirty, so he cashed in a favor he had with her. He gave them a general assessment of your character. I'd have to say that he and I agree with Ron."

"You stuck your fingers in me!" she shrieked, looking for some sort of argument. "That was before I did anything like that!"

"It was before you did anything except ducking your already reduced punishment. I thought I would show you that you didn't like witches any more than you like wizards."

"How did you know? How could you possibly know that?"

"I can tell. I know a girl like me when I see one, and you weren't. You're just a man-hater suppressing her desire for cock with delusions about wizards. I actually couldn't be any _less_ like you, which is a small mercy, I suppose, after you used Colin to rape me. Do you have any idea what that did to me? Do you have any idea what it did to him?" It appeared the witch was growing angrier and angrier. "You see, I don't think you do, because I don't think you have a unique threshold for sexual violence. You think a wizard touching your shoulder is already infinitely terrible, so you're unable to actually appreciate that there are much worse things."

"That's not an excuse!" she shrieked back. "I didn't want your fingers in me."

"You would react the exact same way if Harry breathed on you," Susan responded angrily.

"So what if I react that way? Wizards just are disgusting and they do that sort of thing all the time-"

"No, they don't," Cho objected. "Susan and I are the only ones who have had a real conversation with you in the past few months, so we're the only ones who have wasted brain cells thinking about you. In all the years since we have gone to Hogwarts, there was only one proven claim of sexual assault, which was Markus Flint who admitted to sleeping with his girlfriend whilst they were drunk, but she agreed not to press charges."

"That's because all the other cases went unreported!"

"If they went unreported, then how do you know they happened?" Hermione asked. "That's a fundamentally illogical assertion."

"There have to be loads that go unreported!" Marietta objected. "There's so little that actually make it to court and so little within that that actually go to Azkaban! Of course it wouldn't be reported-"

"Well, how do you know they were guilty?" This time it was Potter. "You know, it'd just be brilliant if there were some kind of system for sorting out who was innocent and who was guilty- like trials."

"You're not concerned with who's guilty, though, are you?" Longbottom asked. She could not have said when he came in; he merely added another pair of eyes to those surrounding her. "You didn't even exclude those cases where they got let off because they obviously didn't do it, like when they had an alibi. You're just trying to scare people!"

"Either that, or she's trying to convince the rapists they can get away with it," Weasley guessed. "I guess Dean and Seamus already got to you?"

"Of course they did! They raped me-"

"That was after you raped several other people." It was Lovegood again. "You didn't even learn your lesson then, though, because after that you tried to do the same with Sir Nicholas-"

"He shoved his cock down my throat!" she argued.

"That was after you invited him to do just that and appeared naked right in front of him," Granger said. "He was mistaken about your intentions and prevented you from correcting him involuntarily. He did nothing to warrant you to seek revenge on him, least of all in the manner of your choosing. If what the other ghosts told me is true, whilst he begged you to stop, you forced a trophy directly into-"

"That was your doing! You made me proposition him," she accused, grasping at straws. "That whole thing about the curse getting worse was your way to keep me from going to a teacher."

"Well, yes, the punishment we were administering was not, strictly speaking, legal, and we predicted the first thing you would do would be to try to get around it, so we told you that it would worsen itself every time you attempted to tell someone about it, and there was a simple charm called the 'flubbing charm' which causes the target to say whatever it is he or she least wanted to say."

"We did warn you," Cho said. "I knew you would be better off if from the beginning, you had to suffer through it for a few days, and think about how you betrayed us all, so I removed your clothes back then and acted like I had no idea it was 'the curse'. We were really hoping it would just be a few days and we would only get you when you were alone, but you showed no remorse at all and almost immediately you were working against us."

"If you hadn't planned revenge against Sir Nicholas for accidentally embarrassing you, it would have been easy for you to just call off meeting with him," Granger continued. "I suspect you researched the temporary incorporeality spell as a way of passing through people rather than running into them while disillusioned, though, so you engineered your own downfall yet again. I even told Neville that if you seriously apologized to Sir Nicholas, even though propositioning him was only partially your fault, we would admit what we had done and you would be given a chance to properly apologize to us."

"Hermione, you're only proving we were being too nice from the start," Weasley said. It looked like Potter was in agreement. "What do you think we should do to her?"

"Well, she has to go to Azkaban for using Unforgiveables," he started. "-not to mention everything she must have used them to do-" He cast a look over at Luna.

"She used a pair of centaurs to rape me and Daphne," Granger managed, as if forcing the words out. "It's taking all the self control I have not to rip her throat out." She looked over at Weasley.

"I'd prefer not to say what she did to me, mate." He looked up and down her nude body. "I wouldn't mind a bit if she got her soul sucked out by dementors. All the same, I don't see why we can't have a little fun, though."


	19. One Opportunity

Marietta found herself naked in the Forbidden Forest. There was a note on a tree, likely stuck there with a sticking charm.

_Dear Sneak,_

_We agreed that despite everything you did, Azkaban and the possible receipt of the Dementor's Kiss will be a suitable punishment for multiple acts of rape and dark magic. We decided, however, that you should be allowed the chance to properly embarrass yourself, to punish you for your original crime, which you were so intent on shirking before. Consequently, we decided to knock you out and leave you in the Forest, your uniform and wand where you left them. If you wake up with fewer memories than expected, Harry can take the credit for that, because he was inclined to kick you in the head for some reason._

She tried to piece together how they got her out of the castle before deciding what to do. Potter had an invisibility cloak, and there were spells for moving unconscious bodies, so the only difficulty would be making it look normal for them to go outside. Remembering that it was the weekend, they could have made it look like they were trying to beat the rush to Hogsmeade, since it appeared to be early in the morning. Carrying her to the Forest would only have required one or two people, which could probably be done without looking too out of the ordinary.

"All I have to do is retrieve my wand," she decided. Her uniform would be nice, of course, and not having it was the main reason it would be no easy task to get her wand back, but once she had it, she could disillusion herself and get away. With her plan unraveled and as many witnesses having been informed of her crimes, there was no way of escaping Azkaban except by escaping Britain entirely. She could try to get her parents to falsify her documents and have her transfer to Australia, but there was still a chance of being caught and extradited.

It was about then that her nagging doubts caught up to her. Granger could not have told _everyone_ in the castle that she had committed multiple crimes, because then she would fear her own imprisonment rather than humiliation. It would defeat the stated purpose of stripping her of clothes and separating her from her wand. The punishment had been set up to force her to go through the castle and endure the stares as she went to retrieve either her robes or wand. If caught by a Prefect or a teacher, she would be verbally reprimanded and most likely handed a detention, if not a more serious punishment.

If she waited for dark, she could probably move about the castle unnoticed, but getting in would be impossible. It stood to reason, therefore, that she would have to sneak in while it was light, find a hiding place, and then wait for dark to get her wand. She would still be contending with the Prefects and teachers who were allowed to move about the school at night, but it was substantially less likely than being caught during the day. Being caught at night would most likely mean being sent straight to her dormitory, punishment to follow in the morning, There, she could possibly find some extra clothes, but waiting until morning would almost certainly mean going to Azkaban, since someone from the former Defense Association would have reported on her by then.

Crossing the grounds after surfacing from the Forest, she suspected some people would be able to see her from the windows, but that was only if they looked out, and the windows were mostly stained. If they saw a nude form crossing the grass, they would probably not even leave class. She flattened herself against a wall as soon as she reached it, though the wall was colder than she would have liked. Her nipples pointed in the cool air and the wall was rough and cold against her arse. Marietta found herself preferring a warm, smooth touch, but certainly not from a wizard.

She reached one of the entrances and crouched down beside it, waiting for it to open. It was possible to open from outside, of course, but she had no idea who was behind it, and the Hogsmeade rush was likely to leave at any time. As the door opened, she lowered herself next to it as a little crowd of students left. She hoped their eyes would be going forward the whole time, but she could just imagine what would happen if someone turned back to look at her. Immediately she would be exposed in the worst possible way; the wizards would stare at her as the witches tried to look away. If they looked at her at all, it would only be with looks of pity, or perhaps scorn.

Deciding it would be better to stand up, the better to hide herself behind the doors as they swung outward, her body was again exposed as she hid. She could spare a hand and chose to keep that over her sex, which was warmer than the rest of her. Her fingers felt cold as the doors opened again and she heard the voices as they left.

"...rapist, that's what..."

"...disgusting; completely disgusting..."

"...bet she loves it..."

As they went out to the grounds and down the hill, they seemed to be talking about her. Her knees went together and her thighs started twitching as her ears drank in their words. Despite her discomfort, she felt that bizarre sensation welling up from her sex and moving her fingers was the only thing that seemed to make it calm down. Continuing to shamelessly play with herself as another group of students left, she decided that there was no need for shame, since the fault of her being out there was entirely with her enemies. She despised them and dreamed of further revenge as the viscous liquid ran down her leg. She put her free hand over her mouth as her orgasm washed over her, keeping the passing witches and wizard from hearing her moan.

Eventually what looked like the last crowd passed and she stole inside as quickly as possible, knowing there was a classroom almost immediately inside. She caught a glimpse of someone in the distance, but made it to the classroom in a blur, shutting herself inside. Fortunately, it seemed there was no one in there with her, but there was nowhere to hide either. It was a standard classroom, with desks and a front desk, but that offered no particular coverage, and students commonly used classrooms to study over the weekend.

"And if I remember correctly from last year, they use them for completely unrelated matters as well," she muttered to herself, taking position behind the door as she heard footsteps in the corridor. Marietta silently cursed herself for believing she would be so lucky that no one would notice her nude form.

"I could've sworn-"

"Might not've been the same witch."

"Well, exactly who else could it be? I saw her, clear as day, gobbling down a cock in the Great Hall." She wanted to scream. With her confusion, there was anger never far behind. "Who else runs about starkers like that?"

"We're wastin' our time. You saw it, someone waved a wand at her and she disappeared."

"That's no surprise. She's been disillusioning herself, she has. Everyone knows it. Don't know where it started, but it's got 'round to most of the school now." It was all she could do to refrain from rolling her eyes, wondering if that made a sound. "-'sides, that lucky bastard gettin' his knob polished? He didn't look at her like she vanished into nothin'. He looked at her like she was runnin', an' he could hear her footsteps."

Whoever the wizard was, Marietta could be almost certain he was an enemy. The most likely explanation was that he or someone else learned about the charm that created an illusory double of herself, most likely after she used one to clone Potter to keep suspicions from being raised for a moment. She hung her head for a moment as the door closed again and she was alone once more. There truly was no life that remained to her under her current identity. Even if she somehow convinced everyone she had never committed any of the crimes she had so far, her enemies could simply invent new crimes.

Waiting in uncertainty that the door would open again, she decided that her wand was the better target, since the Trophy Room was on the ground floor, and if she could presume it to be where she left it, it was at least closer. The trouble was that meant she would be going after it naked. Without an idea as to how much time was passing, she would have to wait and hope for the best.

It was easy at first, since her fear of discovery kept her feet planted where they were, but every minute that past saw her more anxious than the last. She wondered what had happened to her wand since she lost it. Had someone picked it up? Had Granger simply lied and written a false note for the purpose of ensnaring her? It was possible, of course, but what choice did she have except to believe it? Without her wand, she had no chance of escape, and no chance of avoiding further embarrassment. Within hours, she would be in Azkaban.

When it felt like there was little movement in the castle, she decided to take her chance. If she waited too long, someone would find her, since teachers were supposed to be making their rounds and there was enough of a chance one of them would come to the classroom, where she had no place to hide except behind the door. To make matters worse, many adults knew the human reveal charm, which would give away her exact position, as she had no defense against it. Noticing it was only evening as she opened the door, as the exterior windows still showed signs of sunlight, she was about to close the door again when she heard an incantation.

" _Homenum Revelio."_

If they had her exact position, she had to move. She knew not who was casting it or why, but she could not eliminate her mortal enemies from suspicion. They knew, after all, that she would have to come into the castle to get her wand, her only means of escape. Crossing the corridor and going into what looked like an office, she waited for the sound of footsteps to pass, and then pass the other way. Marietta was grateful not to have entered by the greenhouses, though those were usually locked on the weekends anyway. Allowing herself to exhale, she opened the door again and looked out. To get to the Trophy Room, she would have to cross the Great Hall, but the problem there was that even one sentry patrolling a wide open room would probably see her first.

"I have to look for something to protect myself from being seen, even momentarily... a spare robe might work," she muttered to herself. She thought of the laundry room, but that was far away. "The House Elves, though, can apparate within Hogwarts. If I were to find one of them, I could ask them to retrieve a robe for me." While she hated the thought of being naked in front of a creature of near-human intelligence, it was unlikely they would tell anyone about her request, at least not until morning. Slowly walking through the corridor, ready to duck behind a suit of armour at any moment, she caught sight of Professor Sprout at the corner.

"If anyone is sneaking around here, please be aware that I know we had an early curfew this evening, and you will not be in terrible trouble if you were to admit to being out of bed," she said, looking around. Marietta knew better than to reveal her position, since it would be easy enough for her enemies to masquerade as a teacher using Polyjuice Potion, which they had brewed once. She waited for the Herbology teacher to shake her head sagely before walking off.

"Sometimes the teachers here are truly thick," she muttered.


	20. A Finale of Sorts

Marietta found the kitchens, but she was unable to get in. She truly had no idea where the House Elves slept when not working, which was what she presumed they did, but the kitchen had been the only place she knew to look. That would have been a good enough idea, but it was quite impossible to get in. She could assume there was a password, but she had no clue as to what it was. Left with the option to stand there waiting for someone to come out, she decided to scout out the Great Hall. At the very least, she could see how well-guarded it was.

Finding only a single teacher walking around as she peered through the door, she knew she would only need the slightest of disguises in order to get past. Anything that could make her look less like a streaking student would do her enough favors to be able to retrieve her wand without being stunned or something in the process. The human reveal charm would give away her position, even if disillusioned, but with the ability to pass through walls, she could easily make a swift retreat. No closer to having anything she could use to get past the solitary sentry of the Great Hall, she decided to try the dungeons. Professor Snape was known to pursue them quite thoroughly, looking for any Gryffindors to be found so he could dock points.

"That's roughly eight in ten of my enemies out of the way," she muttered, taking the stairs. Reaching the lowest level with ease, she heard a sound and ducked into a broom closet. She was almost certain that closing the door made a sound. Marietta straightened up against the wall of the closet, finding for some reason it was full of potion ingredients and spare cauldrons rather than brooms.

"My, what have we here?" a feminine voice rang out. "I've been practicing a certain charm of yours, ever since you learned it. It's been useful for a variety of purposes. _Illusio._ " All at once the door was incorporeal and two sets of hands reached through. She struggled, but it was futile, within seconds she had her legs on their side of the door, trying to prop herself up by holding onto the walls of her own side. She was just about to twist around when she heard the cancellation charm and found herself stuck in the door.

"This is my favorite part," a male voice said. Marietta tried to be grateful she had not just been cut in half by the door coming back into reality, but she was perfectly trapped, and her bits were on display.

"You go inside, love, we girls can take care of each other from out here." The door swung open briefly, the witch embedded swinging with it, hitting her chin against the wood as it stopped. Draco Malfoy stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Not you again..." she managed, if weakly.

"It most certainly is, though. Now, as I expect this is a service I shall not receive in my marriage, I would like you to suck my cock." He produced a member on the smaller side, but a disgusting wizard-part nonetheless. "You wouldn't want us to leave you like this, would you?"

Controlling her anger as she propped herself up on the door knob, she opened her mouth to receive him, finding it easy enough to fit the whole thing in her mouth. He seemed, however, disappointed in her lack of motion, tapping her head with his wand.

"Come on, move. Even a House Elf can do this better than you," Malfoy taunted, a sadistic gleam in his eye. Her pride and unwillingness to be beaten by a creature of near human intelligence won out over her sense of disgust and she began sucking in earnest, trying to ignore it as she felt a finger go into her arse. It was a sharp sensation, but no worse than a cock, she supposed, so she tolerated it as it explored the narrow cavity. Doing her best to focus on the hardening member in her mouth, she beheld a rather pleased expression on the face of its owner. Marietta reminded herself that her embarrassment was only temporary. Some taunting voice from outside informed her that her rear was too loose to torture with just a finger.

It was quite a shock, however, when she felt a wand shoved in. There was a slap on the side of her head reminding her not to use teeth while sucking, but she could not turn her mind away from the jarring sensation of a rather long wand being pumped in and out of her arse, rubbing on a sensitive spot deep inside as she absently moved her head to accommodate the entirely hard cock, feeling it about to squirt in her face.

 _"Crucio_!" All at once her body seized up and the most terrifying sensation erupted from her rectum. It felt like being ripped apart, like being electrocuted, and set on fire all at once. She could only imagine what motivated the kind of anal torture she was receiving until she found herself slapped again, which she could barely feel in light of the circumstances.

"Did I tell you to stop?" He opened the door. "Daphne, I believe we should trade places."

"I believe we should. There are a few more avenues of revenge available to me if I have her ugly face at the ready. Feel free to do whatever you will with her back half." They swapped places as promised and Marietta found herself faced with a witch sitting on a conjured stool. "I made a trip to the mind-healer, you know? They're quite good at what they do. Fortunately, this one was a dark wizard and he turned all my feelings of brokenness and humiliation into hatred." She removed her skirt and put her quim in the face of the trapped witch. "Get me off."

"Do you even... like this?" she managed. Her expression changed when she felt a wand go into her arse again, deeper than the last time.

"No. I know that you'll hate it, though, and that's good enough for me." A hand grabbed her hair and jerked her head forward, onto the sex of Daphne Greengrass. Marietta felt her own quim being licked, and she tried to imitate it as much as possible. "Lick, slut." The taste was about as saline as she expected, though the smell was at least familiar and not offensive to her nose. At the same time, there was very little she wanted to do less than to keep licking, and yet she feared being discovered. If she made too much trouble for either of them, they would probably just leave her there to be discovered the following morning, if not before then.

Her own body twitched in response to being licked on a sensitive spot, and there was something other than pain coming from her arse as Draco moved the wand slowly and gently. Daphne's expression was unchanged, meaning her best efforts were still going to waste, so she inserted a finger and tried to pleasure her captor from the inside. She seemed to respond to this more, though for some reason the tonguing of Marietta's quim had ceased. Redoubling her efforts as she felt a cock go into her, the fingers of the other witch took hold of her scalp to keep her tongue from leaving its diligent work.

At long last, Daphne seized in pleasure, though whether this came from her orgasm or the torture of her victim was impossible to determine. The door was about to open when she felt a spent cock withdraw, hoping that its owner had used protective charms. His wand, however, remained in her arse, reaching a sensitive spot deep inside, just opposite her womb.

"Are you playing with her still?" the witch asked.

"Of course. There is one more thing I would like to try. She may be close to an orgasm just from my wand up her arse."

"How disgusting," she opined, getting down on her knees to look directly in Marietta's eyes. "I want to see it."

Determined to keep herself from going mad and losing it over such stimulation, she clenched her anus as much as possible, shutting her eyes, though in only a moment Daphne poked her with a wand as if to demand they open again.

"How does it feel?" Draco asked.

"It's... awful..." Marietta managed, though the other witch contradicted her.

"I can feel her blood pressure rising, dear." She resumed the starting contest. "To think, a prude like you, reduced to having her arse sticking out for all to see, and you're about to come for us."

"I'm... not..."

"Oh, don't lie. It only makes this more tiresome. You do know witches can have anal orgasms, don't you?"

"No..."

"Really? What was it that I felt when Crabbe and Goyle used both of my holes? I happened to enjoy it, you know. They were quite well-endowed, and that made up for their lack of skill. Do you think less of me for that?"

It was a trick question and Marietta knew it. She was about as embarrassed as she possibly could be, on the cusp of having an orgasm from a wand playing around in her arse without her desiring it. Anything that would have gotten her out of that situation, she would have done, but it appeared there was nothing. Her open eyes swam in the toil of concentration as she resisted it, hoping against hope that Malfoy would give it up. She was grateful for Daphne slapping her, but the sensation only continued to build, merely delayed by the distraction.

"Answer the question, slut."

"Yes..."

"Yes what?"

"You can only have an anal orgasm... if you're disgusting... a pig..." she managed. "You'd have to be... a failure of a witch." Perhaps she said the words to motivate herself into holding out longer than the patience of her tormentors." Marietta had been raped before, and she knew she could orgasm against her will, but the effort had to be a greater challenge when the stimulation was so unnatural. She tried to twist and throw off Malfoy's rhythm, but it only continued.

"I am not going to deny you this pleasure," Daphne whispered. "You are going to ride it all the way to the end, and you are going to realize what exactly you are."

"We'll... see..." she spat back, holding onto the doorknob for dear life and biting her own tongue to keep from focusing on the building, compounding sensation. It was no longer possible to contextualize it as unpleasant, but she was not a gross wizard and she would not give up, she would not sink so low as to enjoy the physical phenomenon. She tied her dignity to it, her hope, her feelings for her parents and her very identity as she continued to resist. Almost all of her body was snow white as she practically strangled herself to keep her blood from flowing, if at all possible.

It came over her like a flood.

Starting deep in her body it emanated outward, seizing multiple times as her legs started to shake and her heart skipped a beat. She could not breathe until she remembered just how to do that while the lightning traveled up her spine. Marietta moaned as liquid ran down her uselessly shaking legs and the door was incorporeal once more. If it hut to fall to the ground in a heap, she did not notice as the second wave came over her, the look on her face one of perfectly animal delight. Her tongue was still hanging out through the derision of her tormentors; she could not have cared less what they were saying as she rode out the aftershocks. She felt her body being moved to the corridor as the door was returned to its normal state and her company disappeared.

That was about when the shame started.

Under normal circumstances, even with her best efforts, she could not have managed such a crushing sense of defeat, but personal ruination would not stop her on her quest to escape. She could always imagine something worse happening to her, like being put on trial naked and going to Azkaban the same way, and even the smallest chance of that, she had to prevent. Forcing herself to her feet, she looked around for something she could use as a disguise and took up the cloak Daphne discarded, figuring she must have more just like it. Wrapping it gratefully around herself, she was ready to be out of the dungeons for good, grateful that she had not come across Professor Snape. It was a short trip to the Great Hall, where she could be confident in her ability to delay being noticed, at least until she had her wand again.

Slipping through the doors with her hood up, she ducked under the nearest table and waited for the lone sentry to look the other way before moving quickly to the next. Cover would allow her to keep from being seen as long as possible, which would delay the time before she was noticed, further limiting the possible reaction time. Eventually getting as far as she could while still under cover, she decided to make a mad dash while she still could. Practically leaping for her wand as soon as she saw it, just outside the Trophy Room as expected, she grabbed it as soon as she landed.

" _Immobulus."_

Her hand was still on her wand, but she could no longer move, not even to look to see who had cast the immobilizing spell. In mere moments, however, he was standing over her, the cloak open to reveal her body in its entirety. It was Professor Snape.

"Interesting. A red-haired student simply offers herself to me during the most boring, insufferable part of my job. If it interests you, I am more than pleased with my new post as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but I do not enjoy the rest of my responsibilities." If Marietta could move at all, she would shake her head to establish that he was mistaken. "Is that fear in your eyes, you silly girl? Alas, you fail to understand that what is more than enough in the way of disinterest for most wizards is far too little for me."

A table moved closer to their position. She tried to remember anything of use about the teacher, but the task escaped her. If she could only point her wand at herself, she could cancel the immobilizing spell and cast a temporary incorporeality charm, but even that was beyond her. Professor Snape only smiled at the sight of her wand in her hand.

"You may keep that. I have no intention of leaving you with many memories after this is over. _Imperio._ " Her will was crushed in an instant as she remembered the teacher was a former Death Eater. "You will neither physically nor magically resist my advances. Other than that, I do not care what you do," he said as he gave her back the use of her limbs.

"Please, sir, I've done nothing to you."

"Perhaps, yet you have been a bad girl. It is my job to see the rules followed, and you are not a Slytherin."

"That's unfair!" she protested as he directed her to lie on the table at the front where teachers usually sat. She did so without complaint or resistance, her will having been crushed almost instantly. It occurred to her that he had probably been practicing for this very moment for decades, which only irked her more.

"The injustice of it only makes it more delicious. This is how the school will repay me for the injustice it visited on me before you were born."

"Stop! You're only making this creepier." Marietta could really only imagine what kind of problem he had in school, though he seemed to imply that he liked redheads, which made her wonder if he had ever been rejected by a redhead. "What do you even mean by that?" she asked as he put up charms that would most likely prevent their detection.

"Lily Evans was able to become mine forever, and yet she did not. She had only to offer herself up to me, at which point I would have taken her, and then never become a Death Eater. Under the Dark Lord's orders I was responsible for her death and the deaths of several other people, making this her fault." He made a chill dance across her bare skin. "Even this is her fault. She and I would have been happily married, unless I decided to keep her in a dungeon."

"That's not how that works!" she objected. "She's not responsible for your every action, you are!"

"Suppose I told her that unless she became mine, I would serve Lord Voldemort. She would then knowingly send me to join his forces."

"No, that's still ridiculous, because you could still decide not to do that." He seemed inclined to win the little argument they had going, which meant she only needed to keep it up until morning.

"Suppose I were under the Imperius-"

"Then whoever put you under the- nevermind, I don't care anymore."

"Excellent." He forced his cock inside her without preamble and forced her to endure his inconsistent pumping until he pulled out in thirty seconds and ejaculated all over her. "Was this your worst experience?"

"Not really."

"Then I shall leave you with only your worst experiences. It is no worse than you would have received from the dementors. _Obliviate._ "


	21. Epilogue: Many Happy Endings

Harry had greater concerns, like his suspicions about Malfoy, but he was glad that at least he could break up with Cho on good terms. It felt good that with all that was going on, the two of them could at least acknowledge that most of what held their relationship together in the first place was convenience and mutual attraction, neither of which were explicitly bad things, but they lacked the kind of compatibility to endure the hardships he had good reason to expect up ahead. He joined Ron and Hermione for breakfast as always.

"I still don't get why we just let her go. I reckon it could all be an act."

"Well, yes, it could, but if it is, then it's a punishment worse than anything the dementors could have done."

He figured his friends were talking about Marietta Edgecombe, a former thorn in their side and a current slut for the entire school. Teachers had to remind her to wipe the come off her face before coming into class, or at least swallow it before speaking. For him at least it was inconceivable that she would go so far, even to avoid Azkaban, before which she would have at least had a trial. He also figured that the reason the teachers were being so lenient on her was because they thought she was the victim of an unknown dark curse. Little did she realize it, but most of them cared about the students and would have magically detected it if she were suffering from some active curse effect. Unfortunately for her, that had never been the case in the past.

"We couldn't have put her in prison if we wanted," he said at length. "I've been in court before and I don't think they would take 'well, she deserved it' as an acceptable reason for anything we did to her after she betrayed us. We'd be going to prison, some of us for the rest of our lives."

"I don't approve of the way Dean and Seamus handled the situation," Hermione said, taking a sip of breakfast tea. "That said, she still deserved it."

It had been a wonder that for all her purported cleverness, she had been completely unable to figure out that she was not in any real danger of going to prison. Initially, they had hoped that if she went to the authorities on them, her explanation of their acts of punishment would sound like some crazy conspiracy theory, and it probably would have, but as things escalated, she could have 'gone nuclear' and they still would not be able to turn to the law for help. Though he had escaped going to Azkaban in the past, it had only been because Dumbledore had proven he was innocent, which would not be possible a second time.

Around that point, they decided to give her a way out, once getting everything out in the open and trying to talk sense into her failed. They left her on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where she was unlikely to be seen by any centaurs, and gave her a final test for her cleverness, if not her remorse. Faced with the impossible task of retrieving her uniform and wand without being seen, the old, self-righteously proud Marietta would assume she could accomplish it anyway, but if she had learned anything, she would simply walk away.

She was not fighting a noble cause, she was not fighting a winnable cause, and she was not able to prove any kind of point. The smart, humble thing to do would have been to walk to a residence in Hogsmeade and suffer the brief embarrassment of being seen naked before being allowed inside to warm up by the magical fire. She could air her grievances to a sympathetic ear if she liked, but the shrewder course of action was to keep it to herself and be gone in the morning with some spare clothes. As long as she had a wand and could use it, she would never go hungry, and if she did not assume they would drop the issue, she had the ability to flee.

There was the possibility that even if she did walk away, she would still desire revenge against them, but as a missing person who did not want to be found, it made more sense to get away for a few years at least. At the very worst, she would be no worse than the other people already trying to kill him, and she possessed substantially less resources, skills, and connections than most of the Death Eaters.

If her revenge had to wait for decades before coming to fruition, most likely it would wither away and die, as happened with the vast majority of grudges anyone had against anyone. Rage left in a matter of seconds. Things like hatred died down over a greater range of time periods, but it was safe to say it would be gone after a few years. The thing that was almost certain to happen, under any circumstance, was that she would never bother him or his friends again, and he was willing to take the risk.

"Do you figure anyone could ever get us for what we did?" Ron asked, as if bringing him to his next point.

"One of us would have to admit to it. I could see Neville slipping up at some point, but it's still not very likely." If anything was certain, it was that they all knew Marietta deserved everything that had happened to her and then some.

"What if Skeeter says we cursed her with whatever she has now?"

"I hadn't thought about that. Hermione?"

"I don't think she'll take a risk like that again. Come to think of it, she got a rather light punishment, all things considered."

"Well, yeah, but I don't think we could have followed her around disappearing her knickers," Ron said, the witch next to him glaring back. "I was thinking about that, though. How is it we come up with punishments?"

"I'm glad you asked. It's mostly quite barbaric, like I admit what I did to our personal enemies, in the sense that we come up with a punishment based on the emotions we were feeling at the time."

"When you say it like that, it doesn't really seem fair."

"Well, strictly speaking, it's not, because it can't be," Hermione confessed. "The fact of the matter is I'm going to be more forgiving to my friends than strangers, and more likely to punish personal enemies more severely. Even on different days, my mood is going to be different, so people who did the same thing would still be treated differently."

Harry would have liked to pretend he was different. He knew he had made a big mistake in his judgement call with going to rescue Sirius, though, and that was probably not the last bad decision he would make. Even Dumbledore, generally the wisest person he knew, made mistakes sometimes, as it was becoming increasingly clear to him.

"That's why we have laws, then, so the punishments should be about the same." The obvious problem with that was that there was no law that Marietta broke. If anything, the law was on her side. "Should we have tried to do things differently? Like just have a regular non-disclosure contract with a written, legal punishment for anyone who violated it?"

"Wouldn't worry about it too much, mate," Ron said. "We screw up once, that's expected. I don't reckon we screwed it up here, though."

"You're right. I've got more important things to worry about."

"Like following Draco Malfoy because you thought he had something to do with Justin and Luna acting strangely?" Hermione asked.

"I only said it was a possibility-" he protested, cutting himself off a little. He really had thought Marietta had basically given up; there was no indication she was still out for revenge.

As they went to their first few classes, he heard people speculating that the time they saw her sucking cocks in the Great Hall might have been real after all, and not an illusion as the teachers had claimed. Apparently Susan felt a bit bad about learning the illusion spell just for that purpose, especially in light of the circumstances, but he had to echo Ron on not worrying about it. He did not think of their former enemy until she was next to him in Charms.

"Hey Harry, would you like your knob polished?" she asked. He had a momentary fear that this had all been an act for the purpose of biting his manhood off, but that seemed unlikely. Apparently she had sucked off some of her other former enemies, and they had no complaints whatsoever. If anything, she was supposed to be pretty good.

Seeing that there was no one else near him, his only condition was that she take care of it under the desk, and she had no problem with that. With Cho this sort of thing had been a rare treat, and to his moderate shame it was one of the first things he started to miss after they broke up. Marietta's mouth was soft and warm, and it almost felt as though she had no teeth, though he suspected there were charms for that sort of thing. It made it a little more difficult to focus in class, though he was still able to copy down what Professor Flitwick was saying. Fortunately it was only when class was over and the school slut had decoupled herself from his cock that he was called to the front of the room.

"Mr. Potter, do you know that young witch who was sitting next to you... briefly?" He shifted uncomfortably.

"Er, I thought I did, sir. She seems completely different now."

"Some have intimated to me that you and she were once enemies, in the way of accusing you of being responsible for her current character."

"I'm innocent, Professor, you can check my wand to see I haven't casted anything like an Imperius or a memory charm- I don't even know how to cast that sort of-" He had a thought that it could have been Malfoy who cursed her, since he was already suspicious of him, or it could have been Malfoy who was raising suspicion on him. "Did Malfoy tell you that she and I- didn't always get on?"

"Please, there is no need to hide anything, no need whatsoever," the teacher squeaked. "I can assure you, I was very much in support of your efforts to teach the students how to duel whilst Professor Umbridge was disallowing it. Some of us suspected what was going on, but we all assured her that you were all just sulking somewhere, which seemed to please her."

"Sir... I honestly don't know how to ask you this, but why didn't we expel Marietta once Dumbledore came back? I understand there were more important things to do and there still are, but..."

"I trust the Headmaster did not want to appear to be playing favorites. What you were doing was in the best interest of both the school and its students, but it would have been preferable to commend you rather than punish those who hindered you."

"I don't think I was in any mood to be commended. I suppose it was... nice winning the House Cup that year, but..." he shut himself up again. He was not generally the type to let his mouth run too long. The ability to be silent helped him as much with Umbridge as it had with the Dursleys. "If I learn anything about how she turned out this way, I'll make sure and pass it along."

"I may be of some help in that regard. I happen to know that she was discovered out of bed by Professor Snape, who told us she had no idea where she was, or why she was naked at the time."

"Interesting. Could he have removed her memory himself?"

"It is quite possible, Mr. Potter, but even if he did not, we would still expect someone to find her wandering around in such a state, and he is not the least likely person to have found her." He started to think about how there was a chance Snape was helping Malfoy with whatever it was he was trying to accomplish.

"She could have seen something she wasn't meant to see..." he whispered to himself.

"What was that? I dare say I may require an ear trumpet soon..."

"Nothing, sir, I just remembered something."

He decided to follow her once classes were over. In the past he had skipped if he had something more important to do, but he knew Marietta would just be in class all day, whether or not she would be paying attention. According to Hermione, if anything, her attendance had gone up.

As soon as classes were over, he followed her to the Astronomy Tower. Cho had told him back when they were tormenting her about her schedule, so it had been easy enough to find her. He wore his invisibility cloak out of habit more than anything else.

When he arrived, he found her in a probably conjured bed, servicing multiple cocks at once. It was more of the male students than he had ever wanted to see, but he was grateful that he at least was invisible. Looking between them, there was no apparent pattern or similarity. She had a Ravenclaw Beater in her mouth, a bookish younger girl from Slytherin was sitting on one of her hands, and a Hufflepuff seventh-year was trying to get the other to go up his arse. Harry's nose wrinkled at that, but it was nothing compared to the shock of what was going on downstairs. Dean Thomas and a partially corporeal ghost were making use of her lower holes at the same time. It was difficult to tell with a cock in her mouth, but Marietta wore an expression of the greatest delight he had ever seen her wear. He did not know if she had mastered the Patronus under his tutelage, but he had no doubt she could produce one strong enough to drive off every dementor in Azkaban.

"She's not being punished," he whispered.

As the crowd dispersed, no doubt taking oaths never to speak of what had happened, the spent witch stirred for some reason.

"Is someone there?" Harry got his wand out. In the worst case, he guessed he could just stun her and figure out what to do from there.

"How did you know?"

"I thought I heard something."

"I guess they weren't fucking your ears," he muttered. She cocked her head, a gob of come dripping off. "I just don't get it. How are you so happy?"

"It's pretty simple, really. People tell me I don't remember anything, but I think I've got enough in there. I've got one memory I'll hold onto 'till I die."

Her voice sounded alien. He tightened his grip on his wand, thinking of his old concerns about her coming back for revenge. How she answered his next question would determine quite a bit.

"And what would that be?" Marietta smiled.

"The best night of my life."


End file.
